


say it together on the count of three

by iwillbeyourgoal



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Body Swap AU, Canon Trans Character, F/M, Fictional Religion & Theology, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Red String of Fate, Temporary Character Death, Your Name AU, no dysmorphia! i promise, the AU no one asked for but me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-07
Updated: 2017-11-21
Packaged: 2019-01-30 16:39:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 25,571
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12657375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iwillbeyourgoal/pseuds/iwillbeyourgoal
Summary: a comet nears earth, and while it does, two strangers begin waking up in each other's bodies at random. barry has too much of an accent and lup is too aggressive, and they were doomed from the start to fall in love.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> title from the radwimps' "dream lantern," which is from the soundtrack to your name (which is an amazing movie and if you haven't watched it, take the hour and a half to sit down and give that bad boy a view before you read this.)
> 
> in order to avoid disrespect or offense, i've tweaked the religion (shinto) in the movie to be some unnamed fictional religion in this universe. some aspects are the same but i didn't feel comfortable writing about shinto when i have no connection to it and very little knowledge about its intimacies!

**_Barry_ **

 

Barry woke up to a loud saxophone noise coming from his phone that startled him so badly he almost fell out of bed.

 

_You’re stuck in my head_

_Stuck in my heart_

_Stuck in my body, body_

_I wanna go, get out of here_

_I’m sick of the party, party_

_I’d run away_

_I’d run away with you_

Opening his eyes and watching the world come into focus was more disorienting than it usually was – namely because whatever song this was was not his alarm, and when he went to grab his phone to turn it off, his hand grabbed nothingness, because his bedside table was gone.

He frowned and sat up in bed, rubbing his eyes. When he opened them further, he noted that absolutely nothing in this room resembled his own. For one, it was a lot messier, with clothes strewn everywhere and open notebooks lying on just about every conceivable surface. A desk housing a large computer screen sat in the corner, but other than that, the bed was the only furniture. As his senses started to adjust, he noticed that the room had a slight patchouli smell, which he assumed could be from the reed diffuser on the windowsill next to his bed _or_ it could be the general musk of the place.

Huh. Weird. His dreams didn’t usually include smell.

A large mirror hung on the wall by the bed, and standing up, he decided to see just how dream him manifested himself.

He was wearing an oversized black T-shirt that said “LORDY LORDY! TIM’S TURNED 40!!!” in blinding lime green font, but surprisingly, that was not the most shocking thing about his appearance. He was tall and slight with long blonde hair and a deep tan. And he seemed to be a girl.

“That’s different,” he said, and his eyebrows shot up as he touched his throat. His voice was totally different than his own, too. What a strange, detailed dream this was.

Suddenly the door to his room banged open.

“Lup!” a voice yelled from the doorway, and as Barry turned around he almost fell over. The person looked _exactly like him_. “Come on, we’ve got to get to school. If _you’re_ late, that’s fine, but I’m not gonna pretend to be you a second time. No one fell for it. So come on, get dressed.”

“Uh – okay,” Barry said, shrugging. The person (a clone? Twin?) turned on his heels and shut the door again.

“I can go to school in real life,” Barry murmured as he rifled through this person’s closet. “Why do I have to do it in my dream?”

Noticing some braided cords on the desk, he managed a halfway decent ponytail going while he picked out some clothes – a pair of jeans, thank goodness, and a plain white tank top. Sure, he thought, looking in the mirror. This’ll do. He headed out of his room and managed to find the bathroom and the linen closet before the front door.

****

**_Lup_ **

 

Rushing into the kitchen, Lup grabbed two slices of bread from the pantry and butter and eggs from the fridge.

“Oh, good to see you’re normal today,” Taako commented from the kitchen table, where he sat with their aunt.

“Huh?” she asked distractedly as she tore out a small circle from the middle of each slice.

“You were all weird yesterday,” he said through a mouthful of cereal. “You were dressed… not like you, and your hair was weird. And you had an accent.”

“An accent?” she repeated, frowning. “Like, what kind?”

“You sounded like you were in Goodfellas,” Aunt Maria said plainly. “Very gruff and northern-like.”

“What? I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Lup said, shaking her head as she continued to make eggs in a basket.

“Don’t forget to season those,” Taako remarked. “I left some season salt out, ‘cause you always forget.”

“Yeah, yeah,” she muttered, grabbing the shaker.

The small TV that sat on their counter was playing the news, as it did every morning during breakfast. “Rio Dell mayoral incumbent Anthony Taaco gave a speech Tuesday night, speaking to students at Monument Middle School about the importance of doing your civic duty – ”

Aunt Maria calmly rose and turned the TV off, and Taako and Lup made tense eye contact.

Lup ate her breakfast and checked her hair and makeup in the mirror by the front door as she and Taako headed out to school.

“Bye, Aunt Maria,” they called, waving as they got into Lup’s car. The twins always left earlier than they needed to so they could socialize in the senior parking lot before school started – although, admittedly, they only ever talked to their friend Kravitz.

He was already waiting when they arrived, sitting on the curb by Lup’s assigned spot. Grinning goofily, he waved a little as he stood to move so Lup could park.

“God, he’s such a nerd,” she remarked lovingly.

“The biggest,” Taako agreed.

The three of them sat on the hood of her car (a well-loved 1997 white Honda Civic which Taako had named Garyl for no discernable reason) and chatted for a bit before class started.

“You’re acting more like yourself today, Lup,” Kravitz commented after they’d talked for a few moments.

“Why does everyone keep saying that?!” she said exasperatedly, looking to her brother. “What _happened_ yesterday?”

“It’s like I said,” he shrugged. “You didn’t wear your hair like you usually do; it was just up in a ponytail. You didn’t know where anything was.”

“You didn’t know your name in calculus,” Kravitz cut in. “When Mrs. O’Halloran called on you, you didn’t answer or look at her at all.”

Shaking her head, Lup sighed. “Whatever. I’m sure I was just… tired or something.”

Kravitz and Taako shared a concerned look. “Do you really not remember _anything_ about yesterday?”

Lup saw that they were serious and tried to rack her brain for any memories. “I… no, not really,” she admitted. “But I have been kind of feeling weird lately. Like I’ve been living someone else’s life?”

“Maybe it’s your past life,” Kravitz said solemnly.

“Yeah, or maybe it’s the multiverse,” Taako said, rolling his eyes, but Kravitz was nodding.

“Yeah, could be,” the boy said, every bit as serious as Taako was joking.

“Oh well,” Lup said as she stood, not wanting to dwell on it anymore than she had to. “C’mon. Let’s get to class.”

In her first period history class, she opened up her notebook to her latest page of notes. But for yesterday’s date, instead of any notes, there was simply the question, “who are you?” written in large blocky letters.

“Who am I?” she murmured, prompting some snickers from the classmates surrounding her.

In calculus, she made sure to pay attention, in case the teacher called on her again. When she did, and Lup answered the question, the teacher nodded, turning to the board to write out the answer. “Good to see you remember your name today,” she said, and the class laughed as Lup’s brow furrowed in confusion.

“Hey, Taako,” she said as she sat with her brother and their friend at lunch. “Did you write that in my notebook?”

“Hm?” He cocked his head as he opened one of the bento box lunches he’d prepared for the two of them. “Write what?”

She slumped back in her seat. “Nothing. Never mind.”

“Are you feeling alright?” he asked, narrowing his eyes at her.

“I’m sure she’s just stressed,” Kravitz said. “You’ve got the ritual coming up tonight, and your dad’s election – ”

“Don’t mention him,” the twins said simultaneously, and he held his hands up in concession.

“Ugh, I can’t stand this town anymore,” Lup said, her head dramatically falling onto the table. “It’s too small and close-knit and stifling. I can’t wait to graduate and move to some big northern city. Like Boston or Chicago.”

“I don’t blame you,” Kravitz said, picking at his sandwich. “There really is nothing to do here.”

“I want the people who think California is entirely made up of surfing and movie stars to come to Rio Dell,” Taako said, pointing his chopsticks at the two of them. “Show ‘em what it’s really like, vis-á-vis the boring shittiness.”

Lup and Kravitz laughed and the conversation drifted to other topics for a while before the lunch bell rang.

Thankfully, Lup finished her school day without any more incidents of amnesia. After school, she met back up with Taako and Kravitz, who were leaning on Garyl again.

“You wanna come over to my house, watch some TV?” Kravitz asked them, but Lup shook her head.

“Can’t,” she said.

“Gotta work on cords for tonight,” Taako said.

“Ah.” Kravitz nodded. “Alright, I’ll see you later tonight, then.”

Taako and Lup made their way back home, where their aunt had already set up the braiding apparatus. The two sat down and immediately started the braiding.

“It really is so good to see the two of you continuing our traditions,” Aunt Maria said, smiling as she expertly braided the threads. “You know, two hundred years ago all the information of these rituals were lost…”

“Here she goes again,” Taako murmured, and he and Lup smiled.

“…in a fire that started in the bathroom of an old man named Oliver Martinez. So we call it – ” 

“The Great Martinez Fire,” Lup finished. She and her brother had heard this story approximately a million times before.

“So, even though the knowledge of the tradition is gone, the form lives on,” their aunt continued as if Lup had said nothing. “Which is why it’s so important for us to perform this ritual. In a family as old as ours, tradition is everything.” She paused and scowled. “Well, maybe not to that foolish brother-in-law of mine.” Lup and Taako both winced a little, but continued braiding. “As if leaving our traditions wasn’t enough, he had to enter politics. The disrespect, the _cruelty._ ”

Once they’d finished braiding, Taako and Lup got dressed in the traditional ritual garb – which included braiding and tying their hair back with the cords, flowing dresses and a wide belt cinched at the waist. Their aunt came into the kitchen from their backyard carrying a jug filled with water from the river running through the town – water said to be ancient and holy, if you believed that sort of thing.

When she saw the two of them, she set the jug down and immediately ran to hug them. “Oh, look at you,” she said, her voice wobbly. “I am so proud of the two of you. You are my biggest joys.”

Lup and Taako both returned the hug, and the three of them set out for the car.

The ritual was to take place in the local park, and a meager crowd had gathered already once the family arrived. The Taaco family was known for their seemingly outdated beliefs, and although their aunt might have thought differently, Taako and Lup knew some people were there only to make fun of them.

As Taako and Lup set up and started performing the dance they’d practiced, slow and deliberate, the sun started to set. Apparently, their aunt said, it was important to perform the ritual at twilight, because that was when the human and spirit worlds were most likely to intermingle. Lup wasn’t sure she believed in that, but she loved her aunt more than almost anything in the world, and if her and Taako performing this ritual made the woman happy, they were going to do it.

Kravitz was standing toward the front of the crowd, beaming at the two of them as they danced. It was nice to have him there, Lup thought – but the group of three or four of her classmates snickering towards the back brought her back down. She closed her eyes and finished the dance, trying her best to block them out.

The ritual ended with Taako and Lup drinking some of the river water and spitting it back into small jugs, which they then sealed and tied off. These were to be put in a small shrine far into the forest so they could have part of them resting in a holy place.

After they finished and the crowds dispersed, Taako, Lup and Kravitz cleaned up and loaded everything back into Garyl. Lup was quiet for the ride back, with just the radio playing.

"The comet approaches closer every day," the station reporter said. "It will be visible to the naked eye for a few days, but its peak brightness will be on October 4, so mark your calendars for a beautiful display the night of the Rio Dell Festival!"

Once they got to their house, Lup immediately went to sit on a hill in their backyard. Taako eventually found her, and sat beside her. “Cheer up, Lulu,” he said, knocking his shoulder gently against hers. “So what if a few classmates saw us?”

“I envy your lack of concern,” she said darkly.

“Well, you know, maybe you can sell some cords and make money to move away,” Taako said, shrugging. “Then who’ll be laughing?”

Lup appreciated what he was trying to do, but she shook her head. Standing up, she suddenly yelled into the darkness, “I hate this town! I hate this life! Bring me back as someone who lives in a big city with no cares in the world next time!”

Taako sighed. “You can be kind of a fuckin’ doof sometimes,” he said, a bit sadly.

The two went to bed shortly after that, and Lup groaned as her head hit the pillow. Something had to change, she thought as her eyes drifted closed.

 

She woke up the next day to the soft chiming of an alarm… that definitely wasn’t hers. Where was Carly? Where was the near-assault on her eardrums that was the intro to “Run Away With Me”? Frowning, she reached onto the floor for her phone, but her hand hit a solid object. Opening her eyes and squinting, she saw a large brown… side table beside her bed? That’s weird. She was pretty sure her aunt hadn’t bought any new furniture, or at the very least moved it in without telling her.

But as she looked around, this room… didn’t seem like her room at all. It was darker, and everything is a lot more organized, despite there being more furniture in a smaller space. There were no clothes on the floor, a concept Lup was totally unfamiliar with, and it smelled surprisingly clean, like someone had been burning a linen-scented candle.

As she stood up and stretched, she looked down at herself and realized with a start that she seemed to be occupying a male body. Which was, you know, not something she was unfamiliar with, but ever since transitioning and getting gender confirmation surgery, it had been a bit of a foreign sight.

“I’ve gotta ask Aunt Maria what this means,” she said, taking note of her comically gruff voice as she walked, still a little stiff, over to a mirror hanging on the wall.

“Oh,” she said as she observed herself. “That’s… interesting.”

She was, in fact, a dude – but not what she would look like if she were a dude. A totally different dude-type dude. He was shorter than her, she was fairly sure, with short brown hair and a bit of a tummy, which she thought was pretty adorable.

As she turned to look at the rest of the room, it was a bit fuzzy. This was confusing for a few seconds until she realized this dream person must need glasses. Sure enough, as she returned to the bedside table, she picked up some silver wire-rimmed glasses. Not the most fashionable, she supposed as she slid them on her face, but at least they were able to make her see.

“Barry!” A gruff voice came from outside the door. “Come on. You’re going to be late again. Get ready and get going.”

“I – sure thing,” she called.

As she opened a few drawers in his – Barry’s? – dresser, she was a bit confused. There were six decently-sized drawers in total, and by her calculations, one was for underwear and socks, two were filled entirely with plain white T-shirts, and the other three were occupied completely by different types of jeans. Dark wash, light wash, there even seemed to be some variation in fit – but all this guy owned in the pants department were blue jeans. What a weirdo, she thought, pulling out a random shirt and pair of jeans.

“Not like it matters much, I guess,” she said, toeing on some sneakers she found. “Gonna be the same outfit any way you slice it.”

“Barry!” The door opened and she turned to face a man that looked pretty similar to her current body situation, only older. “I know it’s fun to talk to yourself, but you’ve got to get going now. You’re probably already going to be late for school.”

“Ah – okay! Got it!” Lup said, nodding and trying out a smile. The man squinted at her but shook his head and walked away. She grabbed the backpack that was by the door of her room and headed out. “Uhm, bye!” she called, as she stepped outside of the apartment.

Turning around to look outside, she gasped. She was in Chicago. She’d recognize this skyline anywhere, and from the looks of it, she was pretty close to downtown. Everything seemed so incredible in the morning light – the buildings reflecting the bright yellow of the sun, the sounds of cars honking and people having loud conversations with each other or their phones. She nearly sprained her ankle excitedly making her way down the stairs onto the sidewalk.

Lup was immediately in love. This was everything she’d dreamt of, and now she was actually dreaming it. It was so realistic, too – the scents, the sounds, everything was almost too good to be true. She skipped a little walking down the sidewalk through the crowds, and as she passed a coffeshop, she gasped. Coffee and pastries so close to her home? There couldn’t be anything better than this, she thought as she walked inside.

Rooting around in the backpack, she was grateful to find a wallet with a decent amount of cash in it. “Thank you, Barry what’syourname,” she murmured, taking out a $10 bill and looking up at the menu. She decided to get a large iced latte and a cinnamon bun, because if you didn’t go hard then she didn’t know what the point of going at all was.

Lup exited the coffee shop and smiled as she sipped her latte and looked up at the buildings surrounding her. She just wanted to absorb as much of this as she can before she woke up, so she decided to just wander around the city – and that’s exactly what she did. Walking through city parks, in and out of stores, across busy intersections, she felt like a metropolitan goddess. She could spend the rest of her life like this and she’d never tire of it – not like life in Rio Dell.

Her reverie was cut short when someone bumped into her from behind when she’d stopped in the middle of the sidewalk.

“Watch it!” he said, scowling at her. “Shouldn’t you be in school, kid?”

Her eyes widened. “Oh, my God, you’re right. Shit. School. I’ve gotta find out where I go to school.”

He sneered at her and kept walking. She frantically made her way inside a clothing store, took off her backpack and started rifling through it to find any clues for where this Barry guy might go to school. She pulled out a physics textbook, scowled, and opened it to the inside.

 _PROPERTY OF THE CHICAGO HIGH SCHOOL FOR THE ARTS_ was stamped inside near the top, and she could have cried with joy.

“Alright, cool, funky, hip art school,” she said, shutting the book and zipping the backpack up. “Here I come.”

While she tried to navigate her way to a train station, a text from a Magnus Burnsides popped up on the phone’s screen.

_Where are you dude?? Not like you to miss class_

She bit the inside of her cheek as she typed out a reply: _Almost there_ , even though she had no idea how long it would take to get there.

She found a train station, and after getting turned around on the wrong line a few times, she finally made it to the school. Walking through the front entrance, she looked around for any clue that might point her where to go. Suddenly, though, she was accosted by someone throwing their arm around her shoulder.

“Showing up at noon, eh?” the redheaded boy said, grinning broadly at her as they walked. “Bold move. Next time you’re gonna skip, invite me along, okay?”

“Uh, yeah, sure.” She wondered if this was the Magnus Burnsides from the text earlier. “So, uhm, where are we going?”

He snorted. “What do you mean? It’s noon. We’re going to lunch.”

“Oh, right,” Lup said in what was hopefully a convincing tone.

They reached the cafeteria, and Magnus (?) made a beeline to a table with a short, stout boy sitting at the end.

“Found him,” the redhead called out to the other boy. “Our boy skipped class, Merle.”

This person – Merle – clucked at Lup and shook his head as she sat down across from him at the table. “Shame on you,” he said, grinning wickedly. “How are either of us gonna pass any classes without you there to take notes for us?”

Lup laughed noncommittally, but her stomach grumbled when she looked at the lunches both of them brought.

“Aw man,” she said, glancing in her backpack. “I didn’t bring any food.”

Merle and Magnus shared a look, and Magnus said, “You don’t ever bring any food, Barry. You usually just get, you know, the cafeteria food.”

“Eugh,” Lup retched. “Eat that drivel? I’d rather die.”

“ _Drivel_?” Merle said incredulously. “Never knew you as one for the SAT words, bud.”

Luckily, Lup’s stomach growled loudly before she could continue the conversation. “Guess I’ll go… have whatever great thing they’re serving,” she said flatly, standing up to get in the lunch line.

Since she got to school so late, she didn’t have too many classes to attend. Barry’s phone said she had advanced architectural design at 1, physics at 1:45, and tennis from 2:30 until the end of the day.

Her plan was to keep quiet and to deflect any questions she might get during the more academic classes. Luckily architectural design was mainly just working on computers, and she knew the basics of the program they were utilizing, so there wasn’t much of a problem there. Physics, however, was almost the worst thing she’d ever had to do – the teacher called her and another student to the board to solve an equation. When Lup reached the board, she turned to the teacher and said plainly, “I’ve gotta yartz,” and ran out of the room, grabbing her backpack. She hid in the bathroom and played Candy Crush on Barry’s phone until it was time for tennis.

Luckily, it seemed like tennis was 5% tennis, 95% sitting around talking to your friends – and even luckier still, Magnus and Merle were in the class with her. They sat in a shady corner of the court and looked at their phones.

“I want a dog so _baaad_ ,” Magnus whined, showing the two of them various pictures of dogs from accounts he follows on Instagram. “I’ve gotta try and convince my mom to let me get one. This is getting out of control.”

“You’re about to go to college,” Merle commented as he played Words With Friends. “You won’t even be around for it anyway. Wait until you’re older.”

Suddenly a tennis ball ricocheted off the corner and hit Lup in the cheek. It didn’t hurt that much, but it did startle her, which is usually enough to get her riled up.

“Hey!” she called, standing up with the ball in hand. “I don’t know how we can get this far into the semester and have someone who still doesn’t know how to hit a ball and not kill someone, but I guess you’re the lucky winner there, aren’t you, sport? Watch out next time!”

She tossed it back to the offending student, who just stood there, staring at her. She sat back down and faced Merle and Magnus, who had similar expressions on their faces.

“Uh, Barry?” Merle said, cocking his head. “You feeling alright today?”

“You’re actin’ kinda weird,” Magnus agreed.

Lup realized that what she’d done was probably relatively out of character for whoever this Barry person was, and she laughed a little sheepishly. “Uh, yeah. Just weird dream, I guess.”

“That’s a weird way to phrase that, but alright,” Magnus said, shrugging. Merle nods noncommittally and goes back to his phone.

“Do you guys wanna go to the café after class?” Magnus asked a few minutes later, and it takes all of Lup’s willpower not to jump up and down squealing.

“For sure, my dude!” she said enthusiastically, and the two boys exchanged looks again.

The café turned out to be a pretty upscale joint – Lup was fairly certain she can live for a month for the price of one serving of crepes. _Oh well_ , she thought as she ordered it, _when in dream-Rome._

Before she ate it, she snapped a few pictures on her phone before a notification popped up: _Work in 15 minutes!_

“Oh man, I’m gonna be late for work!” she exclaimed, looking frantically at Magnus and Merle.

“You have work today?” Merle said. “You should get going then.”

“Yeah, don’t wanna be late for that too,” Magnus added.

“Definitely,” Lup said, rising out of her seat and turning to leave – before turning immediately back around. “Where do I work again?”

Where she – or, rather, Barry – worked was a swanky Italian restaurant not far away from the café they were in. Barry is a waiter, and Lup made a note to never enter the food service industry ever, because a few hours into one shift almost robbed her of all joy. She kept switching orders, mishearing line chefs, misplacing dishes – a laundry list of things Lup assumed you were generally supposed to avoid if you worked as a waiter.

One customer called her over with a sleazy smile. “Excuse me sir,” he said. “I ordered the chilled cherry soup, and look.” He pointed to a small silver sliver peeking out of the soup. “It’s a piece of _metal_. I could have died if I ate that.”

Lup blinked. “Uhm, well, sir, I happen to know that that particular soup is strained before we serve it, and – ”

“I’ll handle this,” a voice came from beside her, and Lup turned to see a young woman with short black hair smiling at her. “I am so sorry, sir. Your meal tonight is on the house.”

Lup backed off and watched, impressed, as this woman dealt with someone who was so clearly lying to get a free meal.

Later, after the restaurant had closed, the waitstaff were going around and cleaning up the floor. The woman from before – who was a manager, Lup was pretty sure – bent a table to retrieve the salt and pepper shakers when one of the other waiters cried, “Miss Lucretia! Your skirt!”

She turned to look at it, and sure enough, there was a long thin slit in the back of it. Too precise to be a rip – Lup bet that creep had a boxcutter or a knife on him to pull this kind of sick stunt.

“Ugh, it must’ve been that dick from before,” Lucretia said dejectedly. “The one who copped a free meal off of me and Barry.”

Lup frowned, grabbed Lucretia’s hand and pulled her toward the back. “Come with me.”

They entered into the restaurant’s office where Lup found a sewing kit in the drawers of one of the desks. “Take your skirt off,” she said bluntly. Lucretia started to protest, but Lup waved it away. “It’s okay. I won’t look, and if it’ll make you feel better, you can wrap a towel around yourself.”

“Okay,” Lucretia said reluctantly. Lup turned to face the door, arm outstretched, and Lucretia placed the skirt in her hand.

“I know how to sew,” Lup explained as she made quick work of the rip. She even added some flowers and a heart by the seam to make it special.

“Oh, Barry, I love this!” Lucretia said softly, laughing as she looked at Lup’s work. “I never knew you had a feminine side!”

“Well, I don’t really know that hobbies should be gendered, but… thanks,” Lup said, blushing a little as she turned to face the door again.

Lucretia smirked and shook her head as she put her skirt back on. “Why don’t you walk me to the station tonight? It's on your way, right?”

“Uh. Sure.”

“Great,” Lucretia said, standing up and putting her shoes back on. “Let’s go then.”

They made small talk on their walk home, and when Lup waved goodbye as Lucretia entered the train station, she smiled to herself. _This has definitely been one of the best dreams I’ve ever had_ , she thought.

When she reached Barry’s apartment, she was about exhausted enough to pass out then and there, but she managed to make it to the bed after taking her pants off.

Before drifting off, she decided to have some fun and chronicle the day's events in Barry's phone – he seemed to have a journaling app, where he kept track of his schoolwork and some other random thoughts.

 _what a fuckin weird dream_ , she typed out in a new entry.  _woke up as a guy who apparently has never heard of slacks??? walked around chicago, LOVED IT._ _i have got to move here someday. i went to school and hung out with magnus and merle – your friends are nice! then went to work. some asshole put some metal in his soup to try & get a free meal ://///_   _unfortunately it worked bc lucretia let him get away with it. but then he CUT HER SKIRT!!! i fixed it with my feminine charm tho_ _ & i walked her to the train station afterward. she was v v v nice and today was nice and chicago is nice and i loved it. goodnight """barry""""_

Suddenly she remembered with a start the page in her history notes the other day: "Who are you?" Looking around, she finds a felt-tip pen and writes into her palm.

_Lup_

Yawning, she placed the phone back on the nightstand and snuggled into the sheets. 

“Night, Chicago,” she muttered, her eyes already flittering closed. “Hope I see you again sometime.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ahh, thank you so much for reading! i think this is going to be no more than ten chapters (i've already written the last chapter so thankfully, this already has an end). 
> 
> nothing makes me happier than seeing someone leave a comment, so if you feel inclined, please do! thank you and i love you <3


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title from the radwimps' "dream lantern," which is from the soundtrack to your name (which is an amazing movie and if you haven't watched it, take the hour and a half to sit down and give that bad boy a view before you read this.)
> 
> in order to avoid disrespect or offense, i've tweaked the religion (shinto) in the movie to be some unnamed fictional religion in this universe. some aspects are the same but i didn't feel comfortable writing about shinto when i have no connection to it and very little knowledge about its intimacies!

**_Barry_ **

Barry squinted down at the smudged black writing on his palm as he sat up in bed that morning.

“Lup?” he muttered. “What’s a Lup?”

Checking the journal on his phone during breakfast, his eyes widened.

“'I fixed it with my feminine charm and walked her to the train station afterward?!'” he exclaimed through a mouthful of toast.

His father raised an eyebrow at him across the breakfast table. “Maybe we should go to a neurologist,” he said thoughtfully.

“What?” Barry exclaimed. “Why?”

“I’m just a bit worried about you,” the older man said. “You haven’t been acting like yourself lately. We might want to get you an MRI or something.”

Barry laughed, but it was mostly out of nerves – he wasn’t sure if his father’s suggestion was entirely ridiculous.

“C’mon, dad,” he said. “Don’t you think that’s taking it a little far? I mean, I’m a teenager. I think it’d be weirder if I acted the same every day.”

His father squinted at him for a moment before shrugging and resuming his breakfast. Barry let out the breath he’d been holding with relief.

An MRI? Maybe not needed. But something was definitely going on with him. He felt like he was living in a dream – walking in someone else’s life, intruding on their thoughts. He didn’t like it very much, and tried to shrug it off as he said goodbye to his father and left the apartment.

School passed by mostly without incident. If he knew what to look for, he’d have noticed Magnus and Merle’s relieved attitudes that their friend was somehow back to normal. His physics teacher asked him if he was feeling any better today, but otherwise there weren’t too many signs that anything was out of the ordinary.

During tennis, he sat with his friends in their usual spot.

“Let’s go to the café again,” Merle said.

“Can’t today,” Barry said. “I have work right after school.”

“You sure you’ll be able to find it?” Magnus said, giggling a little.

“Huh?” Barry cocked his head, and the strange journal entry popped into his head. “Hey, Magnus, did you mess with my phone?”

“Did I who now?” The boy seemed genuinely confused, so Barry decided to let it drop.

“Don’t worry about it,” he said somewhat dejectedly as he stood. “I gotta go to work. I’ll see you guys tomorrow.”

As he left, Merle commented to Magnus, “He seems fine today.”

“He was kind of cute yesterday,” Magnus said, a slight blush creeping into his cheeks.

Once he reached work and changed into his uniform, he stepped into the busser’s hallway only to be faced with three of his coworkers, looking inordinately angry.

“Wh­­–what is it?” he asked worriedly. “Did I do something?”

“Listen, man,” one of them, Jerry, said. “We _all_ like Miss Lucretia, alright?”

“You’re outdoing us!” the smaller one, Li’l Jerry, accused, pointing a finger in Barry’s face.

Barry stared at them for a second before scoffing. “I legitimately have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Don’t play dumb!” the third, Marvey, said. “What happened when you walked her to the station last night?”

 _So that… really happened?_ Barry thought, with a horrified look on his face. _Does that mean…?_

“I really don’t remember,” he managed to say.

“Oh, that’s convenient!” Marvey said, eyes narrowed.

“Listen, I’ve gotta go, you know, work,” Barry said, waving off their accusations. “Might wanna try it sometime.”

Normally he wouldn’t be so confrontational, but for some reason, the three of them were rubbing him the wrong way today.

At that moment, Lucretia walked in, and all of the waiters immediately straightened their posture.

“Hi, boys,” she said, smiling at them.

“Hi, Miss Lucretia,” they said simultaneously.

“Come on, let’s get to work and make it a good day,” she said, walking past them to the office. “Right, Barry?”

Barry felt his face flush as the other three turned to him with barely concealed rage.

He spent the rest of his shift avoiding his coworkers as best he could to stave off even more of their anger, and as soon as it was over he ducked out of the restaurant and hurried home.

 

**_Lup_ **

****

On this particular morning, birds joined Carly Rae Jepsen in waking Lup up. Sitting up, she scratched her head – and pulled her arm back when she noticed writing taking up her entire forearm.

_Lup? Who are you? What are you?_

The handwriting was the same as the “who are you” in her notebook, and she stared at it before a voice jolted her out of her own mind.

“Lup? What are you doing?” It was Taako, staring at her from the entry to her room. She turned to look at him and said nothing, but he shrugged. “Whatever. At least you’re not just staring at yourself in the mirror today. Anyway, get up, we gotta get going.”

 _Staring at myself?_ she wondered – and suddenly an image of her reflection, rotating her body, examining every inch flashed in her mind.

“What the fuck is going on with me?” she said in a daze, getting out of bed.

As she and Kravitz entered their first class that morning, her classmates suddenly broke out in whispers.

“She was actually kind of cool yesterday.”

“Maybe she’s not as weird as I thought?”

“But didn’t it seem like she was a totally different person?”

Frowning, she sat down in her desk behind Kravitz’s and leaned forward to whisper to him. “Did I do something yesterday?”

He blinked. “You mean you don’t remember?”

“No!”

He took one of his locs and rolled it in between his fingers, one of the telltale signs that he was nervous. “Well, uh, in drawing, some people were… ah… saying some things…”

“What kind of things?” she asked urgently.

He sighed. “They were talking about the election, and how it didn’t matter who won, it just mattered how they distributed the grants. And then, uh, Amy made a crack about ‘careful, some people’s livelihoods depend on it.’ And you turned to me and asked if they were talking about you, and I said yes, you know, obviously, and then… uhm…”

Lup’s eyes were wide. “Oh, God. What did I do?”

Kravitz’s fingers were now furiously rolling the loc. “Uhm. You sort of… knocked over the desk that was in front of them.”

“ _What?_ ”

“Yeah. It was kind of agro of you. Which, y’know, isn’t entirely out of character, but you don’t usually let what they say get to you.”

Lup sat there, staring down at her desk, mind whirring. _Could it have been…_ she thought, but at that point the bell rang and the teacher stood to lecture.

Once school was over, she texted Taako, who had culinary club after school that day. _sorry but you’re gonna have to get a ride w someone in club, i gotta get home asap._

She tore out of the parking lot and sped all the way home, unable to slow down. A theory was congealing in her mind, but she couldn’t believe it, not without some real, solid proof.

As soon as she reached the house, she raced inside, not even stopping to chat with Aunt Maria (which she always did after school). She nearly slid on the floor into her room and slammed the door. Slinging her backpack onto her bed, she frantically pulled out one of her notebooks and flipped it to the “who are you?” page.

A dawning fear gripped her as she scanned the pages.

_“Lup – dad is mayor, aunt (Maria) is retired but some sort of religious figure? Twin brother is Taako, friend is Kravitz. Only friend?”_

_“1 st period US history, 2nd period calculus, 3rd period art 4, 4th period Spanish 3, I DON’T SPEAK SPANISH!!!, 5th period basketball, 6th period English lit”_

_“!!!!! Remember to take hormones in the morning!!!!!!!”_

_“Dad does not live with them. Mother dead?”_

_“Taako wants to be chef, likes to cook food. Kravitz has no discernable career goal but is very obsessed with the occult”_

_“This town is in the middle of nowhere, California”_

Lup’s heart was pounding with realization.

“What the fuck,” she said.

 

**_Barry_ **

****

At the same time, Barry was sitting on his bed and scrolling through his the journal entries on his phone.

_“i think he has a crush on lucretia??? must explore”_

_“he’s a really good artist. seems like he might want to be an architect, which is v cliché but also v cool if he’s actually good at it”_

_“magnus is dating julia & loves dogs & woodworking. merle is single & also doesn’t seem to care about most things”_

_“I HATE BEING A WAITER!!!!!!!!!”_

_“is his mom dead too? he only lives w his dad & dad never mentions her”_

_“have got to buy him some different pants. this jean obsession has clearly gone on long enough.”_

His thoughts were reeling, as he lowered his phone. “I can’t believe it,” he said warily. “In our dreams, that girl and I are…”

 

**_Lup_ **

“In our dreams, that guy and I are…”

 

**_Lup & Barry_ **

****

“…switching places?!”

 _Okay, so here’s what I’ve got figured out so far,_ Lup wrote in her phone’s notes app a week later.

_barry is a guy my age living in chicago. we switch bodies randomly_

Barry was doing the same thing, his fingers tapping furiously as he typed in his journaling app.

_Lup is an 18 year old girl that lives in the middle of nowhere (Rio Dell) in California. The days we switch seem to come pretty irregularly._

_sleep is the trigger, but why we do it is anyone’s fuckin guess_

_Our memories of the switch are hazy after waking up, but throughout the day memories peek through._

_it’s clear from the reactions of the ppl around us that the switch is deffo happening._

_The more it happens, the more we’re able to remember about each other. I know there is a girl named Lup in Rio Dell._

_barry is real & is also a huge fucking nerd_

_We’ve started communicating through our phones, setting down ground rules for each other to make the switches as smooth as possible._

**_LUP’S GROUND RULES_ **

  * **_no bathing or showering!! leave that to me. don’t touch my body!!_**
  * **_i’m not the MOST ladylike but don’t sit like a linebacker when you’re wearing a skirt!_**
  * **_don’t ever forget to take hormones!_**
  * **_lose the godfather accent!_**
  * **_don’t be smarter than usual!!! if the teacher calls on you don’t be a showoff, just answer it & move on!_**



****

**_BARRY’S GROUND RULES_ **

  * **_Stop being so aggressive with people, just take a deep breath and let it go if someone annoys you._**
  * **_Stop spending all my money!! You don’t have to get two coffees every single day!_**
  * **_Don’t be late for work or class, I can’t afford to fail or lose my job!_**
  * **_Don’t you DARE buy me any other pants. I have a style and I stick with it!_**
  * **_Stop being so friendly with Miss Lucretia! All the other guys hate me!_**



****

_ok i GET IT that you’re good at sports but stop making such huge plays in basketball! i am NOT good at sports! and jumping around so much?? if you’re gonna do that put on a sports bra!_

_LUP! Stop buying stupidly expensive desserts at the café! Magnus and Merle are freaked out, and also, THAT IS MY MONEY!_

_well it’s YR BODY that’s eating them. also, idk if you noticed but i work all the time at the restaurant. btw you take WAY too many shifts_

_I take so many shifts because you’re spending all my money!! Also, making these cords with your aunt is impossible. How am I supposed to learn how to do something so complicated?_

_grabbed coffee w lucretia today! yr relationship is going great, thanks to meeeee_

_What the hell, Lup! Don’t play with my relationships like that!_

_uh barry why have a girl AND a boy come up & given me love letters?? what are you DOING?_

_What can I say, you’re more popular when I’m you. People like you._

_LMAO don’t give yourself too much credit, you don’t even have a girlfriend_

_It’s not like you have a boyfriend!_

_I’M SINGLE CAUSE I WANT TO BE!_

_YEAH, WELL, ME TOO!_

**_Barry_ **

 

Waking up to Carly Rae Jepsen was less disorienting now that he understood why it was happening.

“Another Lup day,” he said as he picked out some clothes and pulled his hair up into a ponytail. After he got dressed (his usual Lup fare was one of the two pairs of jeans she owned and any one of her shirts that weren’t too flashy) he made sure he had everything he needed for school in his backpack, threw it over his shoulder and headed out to wait for Taako.

The boy was sitting at their breakfast table, but when he looked at Barry he frowned. “Why d’you have your backpack, goofus?” he asked. “It’s Saturday.”

Barry blinked. “Oh,” he said. Miraculously, in the month and a half since he and Lup had started switching, they’d never once switched on a weekend. He wondered why that was.

Setting down his backpack against the wall, he smiled as Aunt Maria came down the hall.

“Oh, it’s so nice to see the two of you up on time!” she said, smiling as she carried two small boxes that were wrapped with some kind of fabric. “Bright and early for the offering trip.”

 _Offering trip?_ Barry wondered, but Taako didn’t seem to be puzzled, so he guessed he shouldn’t act that way either.

The three of them piled into Lup’s car (whose name was Garyl, Barry learned, and when he asked why Lup had just replied “nooooo idea”) with a picnic basket filled with lunches Taako had made for them and drove to the edge of a forested hill.

“We have to park here,” Aunt Maria said. “The shrine is about an hour’s walk into the woods.”

They got out and began the trek into the forest. Barry hadn’t ever done much exploring outside of Chicago, and he had to admit that for all its insipid boringness, Rio Dell could be incredibly beautiful. The trees looked so green that they almost seemed fake, and the way the light filtered through their leaves to the ground made Barry think of old Studio Ghibli movies he and his father would watch when he was younger.

Taako, carrying the picnic basket, and Barry were walking behind Aunt Maria, and for the first time, Barry noticed her age. She wasn’t old, per se, but there was a definite curve to her back when she walked, she had the slight build of someone who’d been working for decades, and her hair was mostly grey. He wondered how old she was – and how old their mother would have been when she died.

“Why’s the shrine so far away?” Taako called to her.

“Well, because of Martinez, I have no idea.”

 _Martinez?_ Barry mouthed to Taako.

“Martinez, you know? The fire guy,” he replied, shaking his head at his sister’s apparent ignorance. Barry decided not to press the issue further.

He turned his eyes back to their aunt. If the shrine really was an hour’s walk, they had a long way to go. He wasn’t sure she would be able to last the whole way, so he jogged up to where she was.

“Here, Aunt Maria,” he said, crouching down. “Come on, I’ll give you a piggyback ride.”

She smiled appreciatively at him as she climbed onto his back. “Thank you, Lup.”

“No problem,” Barry said, standing up and falling back so they were walking beside Taako.

They walked for a few more minutes before Aunt Maria piped up from Barry’s back: “Lup, Taako, have I ever told you about our religion’s concept of unity?”

Barry looked to Taako, who raised his eyebrows and shook his head.

“No, I don’t think you have,” Barry said.

“Tying our cords is unity. Connecting with another person is unity. The flow of time is unity,” she explained. “The river water we’re taking as an offering is also an example of unity.”

Barry’s heart warmed at the description – something about the idea of connection while so far in the beautiful forest resonated with him deeply.

“Time, like life, can be complicated. It weaves just as our cords do, connecting and unraveling, and always ending. That is unity, even though it might not seem like it.”

These words were echoing in Barry’s mind as they decided to stop for lunch. Taako had made the three of them tea sandwiches, complete with slices of brie with a grape relish and thermoses of iced tea.

“This is really great, Taako,” Barry said as he ate his second slice of brie.

“Thanks, babe,” he said, beaming. “Can I have some of your tea? I drank all of mine.”

“Sure,” Barry said, passing him his thermos.

“Ah!” Aunt Maria said, laughing a little. “That’s also unity – the sharing of food. One of the greatest connections we can have with each other is a good meal. That is why I think you’re entering a profession that’s almost holy, Taako.”

This made Taako smile even bigger.

 _Lup is really lucky to have these two_ , Barry thought, watching them.

They finished the meal and packed everything back into the basket. Barry took Aunt Maria onto his back again as they set off, and the three of them talked about the twins’ school and extracurriculars until they reached a clearing that began at the top of a steep slope. At the bottom of the slope was what seemed to be a mile-wide shallow lake with an island in the middle of it, and on the island was what looked like a cave.

“There it is!” Aunt Maria exclaimed. “The entrance to the shrine. You can let me down now, Lup, thank you.”

Barry did, and the three of them began the final leg of their trip. Once they reached the edge of the lake, Aunt Maria stopped, so Barry and Taako did as well.

“Beyond here is the underworld,” she said seriously, but Barry wasn’t entirely sure if she actually meant it.

“The underworld?” he asked, looking to across the lake. “It… doesn’t look any different than the rest of the place.”

“It is,” she said simply as she began to cross the water, Barry and Taako following behind her.

Once they reached the entrance of the cave, Taako pulled the boxes (which Barry had learned contained river water that Taako and Lup had drunk and then spit back) out of the basket and handed one to Barry.

“I cannot put the offering in for you,” Aunt Maria said. “These contain half of you, an important distinction to the gods.”

 _Half of Lup_ , Barry thought, looking down at the box with a mix of shame and pride. He almost felt like he shouldn’t be here – like he was witnessing something more personal than even seeing Lup’s body in just her underwear (which he had, unavoidably, done several times by that point.)

Taako looked at Barry, a smile playing on his lips. “Well,” he said. “Let’s do it, Lulu.”

The two of them entered the small cave and placed the boxes, liquid sloshing around inside, on a rock pedestal a little way into the enclosure. _If whatever god is listening, please accept this from Lup and not me_ , Barry prayed solemnly as they turned to walk out. _She deserves the blessing. I don’t._ He wasn’t religious in the slightest, but he felt like it wouldn’t be right if he didn’t make the distinction.

Barry carried Aunt Maria up the slope from the lake, and the three of them decided to sit for a few hours, talking and looking at the scenery. Barry took that moment to take in, _really_ take in Rio Dell. He could hear cicadas – something he’d only ever heard in movies or video games. Every now and then birds would sing back and forth to each other. The smell of the air was so clean that it almost made him feel like the dirty Chicago air he’d been breathing his whole life had been somehow poisoning him, weighing him down. He felt light and unencumbered.

He wondered why Lup wanted to leave so badly.

They stayed there until it was around 5 o’clock and the sun was starting to set. Barry took Aunt Maria on his back again and they begun their walk back to the car. They didn’t talk as much this time, but once they reached the edge of the woods, they stopped to look over the small town. Everything was tinged orange from the sun inching down past the horizon, and Barry couldn’t help but smiling as he looked.

“I wonder if we’ll be able to see the comet soon,” Taako said, holding a hand up to block the sun from his vision.

 _Comet?_ Barry thought, racking his brain for anything Lup might have told him. _A comet…_

Oh, that’s right. He remembered the newscasters talking about it a few switches ago during breakfast. Apparently it would be visible for a few days and then reach its peak on October 4.

But, this comet...

He’d… once before…

His thoughts were interrupted by Aunt Maria’s voice.

“Oh, Lup,” she said, looking directly into Barry’s eyes and sounding unbelievably sad. “You’re dreaming, aren’t you?”

 

Barry woke up, heart pounding so violently it could have lifted his ribs, with tears on his face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> things i googled while writing this chapter:  
> -"grape relish" (to make sure it was a real thing)  
> -"mayor grant distribution" (to sort of figure out how that whole deal worked)  
> -"are there cicadas in northern california" (because i am from alabama and have no idea how the rest of the world works)
> 
> thank you so much for the comments i got on chapter one!! those really make my day, so if you enjoyed this one, leave a comment if you'd like!!! thank you, love you <3


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> haha heyyyy, this is where that "major character death" warning comes into play. but also the "temporary character death" part too!

**_Barry_ **

 

_Barry…_

_Barry..._

_Don’t you remember me?_

_It’s Lup!_

 

A strange feeling overtook Barry as he raised his hand to his face and lightly touched his cheeks. His fingertips came away wet, and he frowned. _I’m… crying? Why?_

The feeling was almost inexplicable, but if Barry had to put a word to it, it would be ‘loss.’ He felt as if he had suffered a terrible, terrible personal loss – but perhaps even worse was the feeling that, if he could only remember what he’d lost, he could have the means to get it back. The harder he tried to focus on it, though, the fuzzier the memory (if that _was_ what this was) seemed. Eventually he gave up, sighing and picking up his phone to check his notifications.

Eyes widening, he saw he had a text from Lucretia.

_I’m almost there! I can’t wait._

“Almost there?!” he cried, opening his journaling app to see if Lup left him any surprises. “Almost where?”

_you have a date w miss lucretia at the museum of contemporary art at 10:30 sunday!!! i really wanted to go on this date, but if i’m unlucky and it ends up being you instead, be grateful and have a good time, ok?_

“Shit!” Barry exclaimed, jumping out of bed and pulling some clothes on. (Lup, against all his wishes, had bought him a decent button-up shirt “just in case.” Normally he would have been mad, but right then he was making a mental note to look up how expensive it would be to ship “thank you” flowers to California). “Shitshitshitshitshit!”

Luckily, he was only about a 15-minute train ride away from the museum, so after dashing out of his apartment and almost breaking a leg running to the station, he made it with about 10 minutes to spare. Standing in front of the museum, he bounced up and down on his heels nervously. Truth be told, he had never actually been on a date before. Never even been asked. Well, not as himself, anyway. Apparently Lup was getting courted left and right during the days they weren’t switched, he thought with a tinge of jealousy. He wondered if she’d taken any of the people up on their offers, though he had a feeling she hadn’t.

While he was lost in these thoughts, a woman popped up in front of him. He looked up, and there was Lucretia – looking, if possible, even more radiant than she did in the restaurant. She was wearing a wide straw sunhat, a long, flowy dress with a floral pattern – but the same white sneakers she wore at work. She looked amazing, and he was sure he looked like a lump.

“Hi, Barry,” she said, grinning at him. “Been waiting long?”

“Yes,” he said. “I mean, no. I mean – uh –” _Is there a right answer to this? Oh God, I am so bad at dating, holy shit_. “I mean, I just got here.’

If Lucretia was put off by his apparent idiocy, she didn’t show it, just smiling so her eyes crinkled. She really was so beautiful it was ridiculous. “Great! Let’s get going, then, shall we?”

She grabbed Barry’s arm, and for a second he stopped breathing as they started walking toward the museum entrance.

 

“Okay, this is a good thing to know about myself: I am absolutely terrible at date conversations,” he muttered to himself, looking at his reflection in the museum’s bathroom.

The date wasn’t going _terribly_ , really, but it definitely was not going well. Lucretia was doing everything right – asking engaging questions about his life, telling funny stories, trying to start intelligent conversations about the art. And Barry was really trying to keep up, but it was seeming like this was a race he was destined to lose from the start.

Sighing, he took out his phone and opened up the journal app again. Scrolling down, he noticed that Lup had written something else besides the date notification.

 _ok barold_ (he growled – he hated when she called him that) _so you’ve probably never been on a date before, right? “why no, lup, i haven’t,” you say. “how perceptive of you.” thank you very much. i figured that would be the case, so below are some links that should be able to help you out!_

He felt an immense sense of relief until he scrolled down and saw the titles of the links.

**_9 Foolproof Flirting Tips for the Socially Awkward_ **

**_12 First Date Conversation Tips That Won’t Make You Seem Weird_ **

**_Read This If Social Anxiety Really Fucks With Your Dating Life_ **

Growling, he closed out of the app. She was making fun of him, he just knew it. In any case, he _did_ feel a little bit better as he exited the bathroom and made his way to a nearby photo exhibit. Lucretia was walking a few feet in front of him, and he was grateful for a situation where he didn’t have to talk.

The exhibit was called “Homesickness” and seemed to be black and white photographs of various towns across the United States, separated by region. There were pictures of what seemed to be downtown areas, neighborhoods, school campuses – but none of them had people in them, and none of the locations were labeled. This lent the images an eerie, abandoned quality that Barry couldn’t quite shake as he moved from “Southeast” to “West Coast.”

 He recognized one of the pictures as somewhere along the Hollywood Walk in Los Angeles and was astonished that the photographer was able to find an area of LA that wasn’t completely inundated with people. A few pictures down was a photo taken on the sandy banks a body of water. A few trees were scattered in the sand, and he could see some cars parked down the way. Nothing too special about this one – he didn’t know much about photography, but regarding composition, he thought there were others in the collection better than this one – but something about it struck him. He felt a choking familiarity as he stared at it, and he willed his brain to just _remember_ , but –

“Barry?”

Lucretia’s voice pulled him out of his own mind, and for a split second he felt real, palpable anger at her for taking him away from… something, he wasn’t sure what. But the anger faded as soon as it came, and he turned to look at her.

“Barry,” she said, smiling a little sadly. “It’s like you’re a different person today.” She then turned around and started to walk out of the exhibit, leaving Barry behind.

 

Standing next to Lucretia on a pedestrian bridge near the museum, Barry felt like an unmitigated failure. He wasn’t exactly sure how you were supposed to act on dates, but he was pretty sure you weren’t supposed to slog through them like you were completing a homework assignment. Eventually Lucretia had given up trying to talk to him, and he just trailed behind her in the museum like a lost dog. His chest tightened with guilt – he’d been dreaming of this day for so long, and now, presented with the perfect opportunity, he’d absolutely blown it. Lup would be giving him an earful the next time they switched for _sure_.

“Ah, Miss Lucretia,” he said lamely. She was leaning on the railing, looking at the cars pass underneath. “Are you hungry? Do you want to get dinner?”

“How about we call it a day?” she said patiently, like she was talking to a child. Barry looked down at his shoes, and his stomach tied itself in knots.

“…Barry?” He looked up at her. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but you used to have a bit of a crush on me, didn’t you?”

“What?” he sputtered. “I – no, what? No! What?”

“But now you like someone else?” Now she was almost smiling at him, and he felt his face burn.

“N – no, that’s completely untrue!”

“Really?”

“Really, there’s no one!”

She leaned into examine his face, her eyes narrowed. “Hmm,” she said, backing up and laughing a little. “I wonder.”

Someone else he liked? Who could there be? Long blonde hair and deep tan skin, a chipped front tooth and freckles popped into his head, but quickly disappeared thereafter.

Lucretia kissed him on his cheek, and he blinked. “Thanks for today,” she said, turning and giving a small wave. “See you at work.”

Barry opened his mouth – then closed it. All he could do was watch her as she descended from the bridge into the see of other happy people out on a lovely, mild Chicago day.

 _Lup would love this_ , he thought as he turned to lean on the railing himself. The sun was setting, ducking behind one of the tall buildings on the edge of the horizon and casting a pinkish orange glow over the city. _She’s got to come here someday – like_ really _come here. I could show her around_.

The thought gave him a warmth that the sun was incapable of providing. He could show her his favorite buildings, the places he liked to sit and draw, the best places to get Thai food (he found out that was her favorite, as Taako would make it once a week just for her). As much as he'd never tell her, he wanted to switch with Lup again. Switching meant talking. He wanted to joke back and forth with her, for them to tease each other.

The two of them, through their switching, held a special connection that no one else had with them. It was like what Aunt Maria was saying about unity, he thought. If the sharing of food was holy, how much more important was the sharing of their bodies?

Opening his journaling app once more, he saw that there were a few more lines of text below the links she’d provided him.

 _if everything goes well, the comet will be visible by the end of the date!! how fucking ROMANTIC is that? i’m actually really looking forward to tomorrow, and whether it ends up being me or you, let’s both do our best, ok??_ ♡

 He stared at the heart she left at the end of her entry for a second before circling back to the first sentence.

“Comet?” he muttered, looking up in the sky, which, apart from some clouds and a plane in the distance, was completely empty. “What’s she talking about?”

She must have been mistaken, he figured, but the throbbing in his chest suggested something else. Something was trying to get out of his head – something was trying to tell _him_ something.

Opening his contacts list, he scrolled until he found her name. _Lup Taaco_. His finger hovered over the name, then tapped it and brought the phone to his ear.

Instead of the typical ringing, there was an abrasive tone, then, “ _We’re sorry. You have reached a number that has been disconnected or is no longer in service. If you feel you have reached this number in error, please check the number or try your call again_.”

Lowering the phone, he frowned at it. Weird. He’d have to ask her the next time they switched if she’d entered her number wrong.

But they never switched again.

 

After he fell asleep that night, he felt like he was falling. Falling down, down – or was he climbing?

All around him, he saw shards of light falling from the sky – a comet, a main streak of light from which the other lights were originating. The comet falls onto a settlement in a valley, every building is decimated, it creates a crater. Everyone dies.

Time passes. Water fills the crater, creates a lake. People move back to the area, build better buildings, and though it is small, the economy flourishes. Then, again: The comet falls. More people die.

This has happened twice before. People try to remember, but the stories are lost. The lake is simply a lake, nothing more. The only things that last are these bright red cords, weaving a connection in between the beginning and now.

The arc of the comet is interpreted into a dance that people perform every year, but now they don’t know why.

More time passes, joint cries of babies being born.

“Your name is Lup. Your name is Taako.” The gentle voice of a loving mother. Two new people fall into the world.

“We love you very much,” a male voice – a father – says. The twins grow and play and the family is so, so happy – and when they are around ten, as if in exchange for that happiness, the mother falls ill.

“When is mama coming back from the hospital?” Taako asks innocently, but Lup seems to know that their mother isn’t coming back.

People die all the time. There’s no avoiding it – and yet, accepting it is not as simple as that.

“I couldn’t save her,” the father laments, his head in his hand as another woman – the mother’s sister – stands beside him.

There was nothing he loved more than his wife, and there never will be. The appearance of Lup and Taako, who are identical and still resemble their mother so fully, is both a blessing and a curse.

“What good will keeping the religion up do for us?!” he yells at the older woman as Lup and Taako look on from around a corner.

“It is in our blood! It is our traditions!”

“I didn’t _marry_ the traditions, I married Isabelle! And now she’s dead!”

The fights grow worse and worse, until the father takes his final step out of the house. “Lup, Taako, you’ll be staying with your aunt from now on.”

The life of the small family of three begins here, but the feeling of being thrown to the wayside by their father lives inside Taako and Lup like uncleansable stains.

  _What is this?_

_Are these Lup’s memories?_

Then comes something Barry recognized The days of their switching. The Chicago Lup sees was so vibrant and exciting – he knew that they were technically looking at the same city, but through her eyes, it was such a happier place.

“I hope it’s nice.” He heard her voice – for the first time not coming from his own throat. “They must be together about this time right now.”

The day of his date with Lucretia.

“I think I’m going to go to Chicago sometime soon,” Lup is telling Taako.

“Chicago?” he says incredulously. “Why?”

“Visiting a friend,” she replies. “I’ll use dad’s frequent flier miles.”

Then she’s opening the door to Aunt Maria’s room.

“There’s something I want you to do,” Lup says.

Large swaths of her hair fall to the ground, and when they’re done, Barry hardly recognized her. Her hairstyle now stops just below her jawline, and she smiles, a little sadly, into the mirror that her aunt holds up to her.

She’s in her room, laying on her back with her legs propped up against the wall. Her phone rings, and she answers it.

“Oh, hey, Krav,” she says. “Yeah, I know, it’s supposed to be the brightest tonight. Wanna watch it after the festival?”

 _No, Lup!_ Barry yells. _Don’t, don’t go anywhere near the comet! Go far away!_

But she doesn’t hear him. She’s getting ready, pulling on a bright red romper and denim jacket.

She’s with Taako and Kravitz at the festival, perusing the various stands that are selling windchimes, pottery, paintings.

_Get out of here, you three! Run away before it falls!_

He yells at them, but no matter how loud he gets, it fails to reach Lup’s ears.

Standing in a field by the festival, Lup, Takko and Kravitz are joined by dozens of others gazing up at the comet – beautiful but so close, closer even than the moon.

Suddenly it fragments into an array of shooting stars, sparkling as they trail across the sky. One large segment – a clump of rock – begins its descent. The people stand there, necks craned upward, spellbound by their destruction.

_Lup, run!_

He screams at the top of his lungs, tears rushing down his face.

_Lup! Lup, run! Lup! Lup!!_

And then, a blinding white light – the star falls.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i don't know if y'all can tell but i know almost nothing about chicago and rio dell (which is a real, tiny town in california). but google is a great teacher!
> 
> all those links lup gives barry are real articles i found. fun facts to know and tell
> 
> also, sorry for this one being shorter than the other two, but it kind of came to a natural ending. promise the next one will be longer!
> 
> if you liked this chapter or are just enjoying this story, feel free to leave a comment! i loooove to get em, just like i love you. <3


	4. Chapter 4

**_Barry_ **

 

By the time Barry had been awake for a few minutes, the details of his last dream had all but slipped almost completely away from him. Something very, very bad had happened – he knew this – but he couldn’t figure out what it was, or why it made him so incredibly _sad_. He felt like his heart was going to collapse in on itself from the grief he felt.

As the days passed, he had started drawing scenes from Lup’s small town in his sketchbook where he would usually draw outlines of buildings or other structures. The winding river, the forested hills, the outline of Lup’s house, the roads that led to their high school. Details were fading, but he kept desperately tapping the reservoir of images and memories from his time as Lup – even still, he couldn’t fully capture the scenery.

Lup. She was real, Barry _knew_ she was. He’d like to think he was fairly creative, but there was no way he could have just invented an entire person – and certainly not one as original and wonderful as Lup. Her favorite color was red, she listened almost exclusively to “lady indie pop,” as she called it, her favorite TV show was “Chopped” (which she and Taako watched religiously together, both of them screaming at the contestants). She was _real_.

She had to be real.

Barry had started walking home from school or work instead of taking the train. He enjoyed how the Chicago scenery changed daily, with different popup stores appearing and disappearing, construction crews moving from one building to the next, buskers performing on a certain street corner one day and moving a few blocks away the next day. He liked noticing these things, noticing what made a city a _city_. It distracted him.

Eventually he finished a sketch of the lake that Aunt Maria had taken them to, and when he did, a thought occurred to him.

 _I’m going to go there next weekend_.

As he made up his mind, he felt a great weight lift, as if he’d been carrying it for weeks. That night, before sleep, he made the same wish that he had been making every night.

But he still didn’t wake up as Lup.

 

Stuffing a pair of jeans, a few T-shirts, some toiletries and his sketchbook into his backpack, he nodded resolutely. He didn’t need to pack much, just enough.

He’d been infuriated because, try though he might, he couldn’t remember the name of the small town where Lup lived. He knew it was in California – _very_ northern California, more north even than San Francisco. But San Francisco was the closest city he could think to it, so when he bought his bus ticket, that was the destination.

Showing up to the station, he frowned as he saw two familiar figures standing by the entrance to his bus: Lucretia and Magnus. They both smiled and waved at him, and he quickly made his way over to them.

“Hey, man,” Magnus said.

“Hi, Barry!” Lucretia said.

“What… the hell are you doing here?” Barry said, his brow furrowed. Magnus just laughed.

“You honestly thought I was gonna let you go to _California_ all by yourself?” he asked, smirking.

“All I asked was for you to find a cover for me at work!”

“And he did,” Lucretia interjected. “Merle’s going to be taking your shifts.”

“He says you _majorly_ owe him,” Magnus said, nodding.

Sighing, Barry shook his head. He’d allotted himself six days for travel – a two day bus ride to San Francisco, two days for finding Lup, wherever she was, and two days for returning to Chicago. He did _not_ budget for two other people.

“I was worried about you,” Magnus admitted as they loaded onto the bus. “What if this is some kind of catfish-y scam? So I invited Miss Lucretia. You know, for backup.”

Lucretia leaned back from her seat in front of the two of them. “So, you’re meeting up with someone you met on the Internet?” she asked.

“Internet? Ah, not exactly, that was… just the easiest explanation,” Barry mumbled.

Magnus had been so persistently bugging Barry to fill him in, so Barry had just said he’d met someone online and wanted to go visit them. He hadn’t thought much of it at the time, but he wished he could smack his past self as he sat on the bus.

“I thought it probably a dating site,” Lucretia said thoughtfully.

“What?!” Barry said, flustered. “No, that’s not it at all!”

“Well, in any case, you’ve been really weird lately,” Magnus said, shrugging. “We won’t interfere or anything. Just watch from afar, all covert-like.”

“I’m not a kindergartner, but thanks,” Barry said, rolling his eyes.

 _It’d be so much easier if I could just explain everything to them_ , he thought as he looked out of the window.

His switching with Lup had begun suddenly one day and ended just as quickly. It really did seem like some strange fever dream. But he knew she was real. He’d felt her breath, her heartbeat. The softness of her long, blonde hair, the vibrancy of her laugh. Everything about her was so bright and lovely, he thought, that if she wasn’t real then nothing was.

The three of them had spent the first day of the ride napping on and off. Magnus’s head resting on his shoulder, Barry sighed. He really hoped this trip would end up being worth it. Secretly, he was glad Lucretia and Magnus were with him. If his last date were any indication, once he was face-to-face with Lup, he’d lose all executive function and would _need_ some social buffering. Plus, it would be nice for Lup to meet his friends in person, as herself this time. They would love her – he couldn’t imagine anyone _not_ loving her.

Night passed, and they were in Colorado. Barry and Lucretia gave Magnus some cash to buy them coffee and scones at a bus stop, and Barry traded seats with Lucretia (he felt bad that she’d spent the first leg sitting next to a stranger, so they agreed to switch off).

Now adequately caffeinated, he took his sketchbook out of his backpack and started a new sketch – Lup’s room, complete with clothes strewn all over the floor and trash miraculously everywhere _but_ in the trashcan. He laughed a little, remembering how vehemently she defended her messiness to him. To her credit, he thought, she’d always cleaned up after herself in his room. He had a sneaking suspicion that she was a lot more thoughtful than she liked to let on to her friends… but, he realized with a start, he was really one of her only friends besides Kravitz and Taako.

Lucretia and Magnus were laughing and talking behind him as he drew. As unexpected as their presence was initially, Barry felt really grateful that he had people in his life that would be so worried about him to come on a cross-country trip to find someone they had never even heard of before.

Daylight came and went, and their transfer in an LA station came at the disgusting (in Barry’s words) hour of 5:30 AM. But he could barely hold in his excitement – he was _in the same state_ as Lup. He was almost there.

They traveled for almost 12 more hours before they reached San Francisco, and the three of them were so excited to be done with buses that they ducked into the first diner they could find.

Sitting across from Lucretia and Magnus in a booth near the back, Barry pulled out his sketches and studied them intently.

“So, does she live here?” Lucretia asked absentmindedly, reading over the menu. “That’s pretty cool.”

Barry blanched and laughed nervously. “Uhm. No. I actually… I don’t know the name of the town she lives in,” he admitted. “I just know what it looks like.”

Magnus and Lucretia both looked at him like they were considering murder. “Hi, uhm, excuse me,” Magnus said, shaking his head a little. “I’m sorry, did you just say _you don’t know where she lives_?”

“I wasn’t planning on you two coming!” he said, throwing his hands up in defense. “I was just going to find it – ”

“From your drawings?!”

“Yes!”

Their waitress, thankfully, came to their table right as it looked like Magnus was going to throttle Barry’s neck. “Hi, I’m Lorie, how can I help y’all – oh, those are so nice!” She leaned over the table, looking at Barry’s sketches of the river, certain houses, the lake. “These really look like Rio Dell!”

Rio Dell.

 _Rio Dell_ , how could he have forgotten?

“Do you know where these are?” Barry asked frantically, looking at the kindly woman like she was his own personal savior.

“Of course! That’s Rio Dell. My husband’s from there.” Lorie turned to the counter and signaled to the man behind the cash register. “Lloyd, c’mere! This boy’s done some drawings of Rio Dell.”

The man joined her by their table and squinted at the drawings. “I’ll be damned,” he said softly. “You did a great job capturing it, young man.”

“Thank you, how do we get there?”

The man gave him a confused look – as did the other three people.

“How do… you get there?” the man repeated.

“Rio Dell? Barry, you’re not… you’re not talking about…” Lucretia started, her voice a combination of confusion and concern.

“I’m not talking about what? What’s the matter?” he demanded, looking from one face to the next.

“Dude,” Magnus said, apologetically. “Rio Dell is… completely gone. Don’t you remember? It was all over the news.”

“It was destroyed by a comet,” the woman said, rubbing her husband on the back. “Luckily, Lloyd’d moved away some twenty years ago, and his family was all gone, too, but… still. All those people.”

Barry’s mind was blank and his heart was pounding so loudly he swore everyone in the diner could’ve heard it.

“Uh, if you want, I can give you directions to… to where it used to be,” Lloyd said quietly.

“Could you, please?” Lucretia said, looking worriedly at Barry. The man nodded and wrote down some directions on the back of receipt paper.

“If you don’t have a car, there’s, ah, a rental service down the block from here,” he said. “I know the owner, and… if you’ll let me have one of these drawings, I can call ‘er and get you a discount.”

Barry nodded silently, picking up his sketch of one view of the riverbank and handed it to him. Lloyd smiled as he looked at it, and Lorie squeezed him.

“Thank you so much,” she said quietly to Barry. “This really means a lot to him. He misses it all the time.”

“No problem,” he managed to say as Lloyd went to make the call to the rental agency.

Barry tried to ignore Lucretia and Magnus’s looks of worry as they drove the four hours to where Lloyd said Rio Dell was. It wasn’t hard to miss once they’d arrived – there was a chain link fence barricade that stretched for miles, forbidding any entry. KEEP OUT signs were peppered every few feet, and ivy crawled over the fence and down onto the ground beyond.

“…Barry?” Lucretia asked gently. “Are you sure this is the place?”

“There’s no way,” Magnus said, overly cheerful. “You just made a guess, but this can’t be where they live – ”

“No, it is,” Barry said dully. “I… I know it all. Not just the town, but the high school, the river, her house. I know everything!”

To try and get the idea through to himself, he had to shout. He didn’t feel the tears that had started to pour down his face.

“So this is what you’ve been looking for then?” Magnus asked. “The town where hundreds of people died, what was it… three years ago?”

Barry turned to look at him slowly. “Died… three years ago?”

No, it couldn’t be true.

“No, look, I’ve got the journal entries she wrote,” he said manically, taking his phone out and pulling up his journaling app. Clicking on the most recent entry, relief washed over him – until the letters started to move in front of his eyes.

“What?!” He rubbed his eyes in disbelief and watched as each word Lup wrote devolved into meaningless symbols, flickering like a candle, then disappearing completely. It was as if someone was deleting each entry remotely, until none remained.

“Wh—why?” Barry muttered softly in despair, looking at the empty entries.

 

The three of them sat in the neighboring city’s library, flipping through books having to do with Rio Dell and the comet.

Phandalin’s comet – so named for the man who discovered it hundreds of years ago – revolved around the sun with a period of 1,200 years. It last came closest to earth three years before, in October – the same month that it was right then. Its long period blew Halley’s comet’s (76 years) out of the water, and when it did visit, it was a miraculous sight.

It passed by at a distance closer than the moon, and the tail was usually beautiful, bright blue with offshoots of deep fuchsia and red. The coming of Phandalin’s comet put the entire world into a festive mood.

But no one could have predicted that the comet’s core would split as it neared Earth, nor that a 130-foot boulder lay inside its ice-covered interior. This would become a meteorite as it passed through Earth’s atmosphere, hurdling towards the planet’s surface at the destructive speed of 20 miles per second. Its point of contact was the United States. More specifically, California, and even _more_ specifically, the small, quiet town of Rio Dell.

October 4 happened to be the day of their autumn festival, so the entire town was gathered near the water. The time of the collision was 8:42 p.m.

When the meteorite landed, a huge area centered at the site of the festival was annihilated. The destruction didn’t stop at the houses and forests, though; the impact dug into the earth itself, forming a near-one-mile crater in the ground. A few seconds after impact, an earthquake was set off three miles away, causing even worse damage at the crater – everything fell into the crater that hadn’t already.

The final death toll was over 500, almost half of Rio Dell’s population. The town became the stage of the worst meteorite disaster in recorded history.

The crater appeared next to the Rio Dell Lake – Barry recognized this as the location Aunt Maria had taken him and Taako – and was dubbed New Rio Dell Lake.

The south half of the town suffered relatively little damage, but the hundreds of citizens who were left soon began to leave. Before a year had passed, the local government could no longer function, and within fourteen months, Rio Dell had virtually ceased to exist.

This was all textbook fact, Barry thought, so of course he had to have known all of this already. Three years ago he’d been a freshman in high school, and he was sure he’d heard this news somehow.

But still, something was off. The pieces didn’t fit.

Up until last month, he had spent many days as Lup in Rio Dell. That meant the place he’d seen, the place where Lup had lived, couldn’t have been Rio Dell.

The comet and their switching were unrelated. That was the only natural explanation.

But as he flipped through books, looking at older pictures of the town, he couldn’t help but doubt that conclusion. In his heart, he knew: this was the place.

 

_Rio Dell, Disappeared: A Full Record_

_The Town that Sunk in One Night: Rio Dell_

_The Tragedy of Phandalin’s Comet_

He sifted through thick books with names like that from cover to cover, and the more he did, the more he was convinced that this was the place he’d spent his time as Lup. The small park, the town’s three bars comically all next to each other on one block, the mountain path – and, of course, Rio Dell High School, where he’d taken his classes with Taako and Kravitz.

Ever since seeing the ruins with his own eyes, the images were only becoming more and more vivid. It hurt to breathe.

It felt as though the pictures in the books were sucking up the air, and reality itself.

A photo with the caption “Rio Dell High School Field Day 2012” stuck out glaringly to him – it depicted a group of high schoolers participating in a three legged race. One pair on the edge looked painfully familiar to Barry. They looked remarkably identical, one with his long blonde hair in a thick braid, the other with her hair braided and tied up with a bright red cord.

The air around him grew even thinner.

“Barry.” Looking up, he found Lucretia and Magnus standing there, holding a book. On its cover in solemn gold lettering: _Rio Dell Comet Disaster: Record of Deceased Persons_.

He took it and flipped through the pages. The victims were listed by name and address. His finger followed the names until, upon seeing a familiar name, he paused.

**Mac Kravitz (18)**

“Kravitz…” he muttered, his mind wrought with grief. Lucretia and Magnus gulped, and then he found them. The names.

**Maria Diaz (68)**

**Lup Taaco (18)**

**Taako Taaco (18)**

He ran his finger over Lup’s name, and his two friends peered at the list over his shoulder.

“Is this her? There’s got to be some sort of mistake,” Lucretia said, and Barry registered through the fog in his mind that it sounded like she was about to cry. “This person… this person died three years ago.”

“No, no, it was… it was just a few weeks ago,” Barry said desperately, shaking his head. “She – she told me, she said I could see the comet… So she can’t… she can’t be!”

Looking up, his gaze was met with his own reflection in the dark window. _Who are you?_ he thought suddenly, and just as suddenly, he heard a sad, faraway voice.

 _“You’re dreaming, aren’t you?_ ”

Dreaming? He fell into a deep confusion.

_What the hell am I doing?_

Barry’s eyes fluttered open, his head resting on a desk in the small motel room they’d rented. He was dead tired from the day. They’d spent a few more hours at the library, poring over newspapers and books, and eventually, his brain had stopped absorbing any information at all. He kept checking and re-checking his phone, but her journal entries remained missing.

Staring at the wall, he muttered the conclusion he’d ended up coming to.

“It was all a dream.”

But did he really want to believe that?

“I recognized the scenery because I’d seen it on the news three years ago,” he said. “And as for her…”

How could he explain her?

“…was she a ghost? No… it was all… my delusions?”

Startled, he raised his head. Her…

“Her name… what was it?”

Lucretia entered the room, smiling gently as she saw him.

“Oh, good, you’re up,” she said, sitting down on one of the beds. “Magnus said he was going to take a shower.”

Barry was silent for a moment, before sighing and pinching the bridge of his nose. “Lucretia, I’m… I’m really sorry for all the weird stuff I’ve been saying today. I don’t… I don’t know what’s going on with me.”

“It’s okay,” she said, and Barry could tell that she meant it.

“And I’m sorry we could only get one room.”

She laughed. “Magnus said the same thing. It’s totally fine with me; it saves us some money, at least.”

She crossed to the desk and looked at one of the books Barry had borrowed from the library. It was open to a page depicting the making of cords.

“Oh, they made cords?” she said fondly, picking it up and reading the captions. “I’ve always wanted one of those. They’re pretty. My mom once brought one home from one of her business trips… oh! You’ve got one, too.”

She was pointing to Barry’s wrist, upon which rested a bright red cord, a little thicker than a thread. He looked at it and moved it absentmindedly with his other hand. “Oh, this is…”

Wait.

This is… what _is_ this?

“I think I got it from… someone I used to be friends with. Sometimes I wear it as, you know, a lucky charm.”

He felt a sharp pain in his head.

“Who gave it to me?” he muttered, staring at it intently.

“Hey, Barry.” He looked up at Lucretia’s kind voice. “Why don’t you take a bath after Magnus is done?”

“A bath…” he said quietly. “I heard from someone who makes cords once that…” Whose voice was being recalled in his head? It was kind, warm, a little older. Who were they? “That the making of cords is like time itself… Twisting, returning on itself. It’s like…” Like the sound of stream, a river. Like the taste of iced tea. Like the movements of a dance. “Like unity…”

A beautiful landscape flashes across his mind: a small cave in the middle of a lake – a lake that _didn’t get destroyed by the comet_.

“Maybe if I go there,” he muttered, pulling a book with a map of Rio Dell from the corner of the desk. “Maybe if I drink the river water, something… something might happen.”

He calculated how far he’d have to walk from the current crater to get to the lake, drawing recklessly on the pages with a pencil. He was going to figure this out. He had to.

 

_…rry… Barry…_

That voice, calling his name again. Hadn’t he heard this before?

_Barry… Barry._

The voice had a sense of urgency, like its owner was on the verge of tears.

_Don’t you remember me?_

Then he woke up.

 _That’s right_ , he thought, _I fell asleep on the desk_. He looked around the room and saw Lucretia and Magnus asleep on the two beds. Outside, the sun had barely begun to rise. He looked at the cord wrapped around his wrist – the bracelet he’d worn so often since… since when?

 _Who are you_?

He couldn’t tell if he was asking someone else or if they were asking him, but either way, no response came.

Pulling out the hotel notepad, he wrote out a short note.

_Lucretia and Magnus,_

_There’s somewhere I have to go. Please go back to Chicago without me. I’m sorry for being so selfish, but I’ll be home soon after you. Thank you for coming._

_Barry_

He left $50 in case they needed money to get back, stuffed his belongings in his backpack, and took off.

 _I’m coming to find you,_ he thought as he walked. _Even though I’ve never met you_.

Picking up some protein bars and fruit from a small nearby grocery store, he coordinated the map from the book and the GPS on his phone. Things seemed to be matching up, and he confidently walked along the fence. The sky was darkening, and if he had to guess, he’d say it would start raining relatively soon. Good timing, he thought sarcastically, as he was set to reach the lake in a little over an hour.

He was still somewhat confused, but for the first time since they’d gotten to California, he felt confident. He couldn’t tell why, but he felt good about his decision to visit the cave. This was the next logical step in his journey – if logic could be applied to this at all.

One raindrop, then another, then a thousand fell upon his head, and he ducked under a large, dense tree to eat an apple and a protein bar.

 _Unity_ , he thought.

The act of taking something into your body, using it for energy, is also _unity_. What enters your body connects with your soul. He’d made special effort when he woke up to remember this concept.

“Twisting, returning on itself, like time itself. Connecting. That is time.”

He glanced at the cord on his wrist. It hadn’t been cut. They could still connect.

 

As soon as the rain stopped he packed up and continued on his journey, and about fifteen minutes after that he reached a scene he recognized: a small island in the middle of a shallow lake.

“It’s really there!” he exclaimed. “It wasn’t a dream!”

He made his way down the slope that led to the lake, laughing as his legs flew almost out of control like he was a child running in a game of tag.

Splashing through the water, he slowed down as he reached the cave. He was giddy with recognition; he _knew_ this place.

He ducked inside and squinted as his eyes adjusted to the darkness. There was a small pedestal with two small white boxes on top of it. He gingerly walked toward it and picked up one of the boxes – instinctually, he knew this was the right box. Unwrapping it slowly, he saw the clear liquid sloshing around inside.

Taking a deep breath, he drank the contents.

“Well, that just… tastes like water,” he said, and as he took a step back, he slipped on a wet patch of stone and fell. His head hit the ground, and right before he fell unconscious, he saw a comet heading straight for him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> y'all, i spent SO MUCH time on google maps trying to figure out the timeline for traveling between chicago and rio dell. why did i make them so far apart???? whyyyy
> 
> also, if you've watched the movie (or read the book) you'll notice that i'm messing a bit with the timeline. that is bc i have a terrible memory. BUT i like to think that that makes this fic a bit more AU-y than just an adaptation. 
> 
> as always, if you enjoyed, please leave a review! they really do make my day. love you <3


	5. Chapter 5

**_Barry_ **

****

The comet, falling, a long red line tailing it. Twisting, curving, returning on itself – like time. Like the cord on Barry’s wrist – wait, the cord _was_ the comet. It was pulling him somewhere? Where? Where did it want him to go?

His eyes shot open with a gasp. His heart was racing, and his bangs were matted to his forehead with sweat—

Wait.

Bangs?

Looking down at himself, his eyes couldn’t help but tear up. “I have boobs!” he exclaimed, hugging himself. “I’m Lup! She’s alive!”

The door opened, and Taako stood there, an eyebrow raised. “Uh. Lup?”

Barry turned to him and grinned wildly. “My twin! Taako!” He got up to hug him, but Taako had shut the door before he could.

“Aunt Maria!” he heard Taako call as he walked down the hallway. “I’m gonna ride to school with Krav. Lup’s finally lost it. ”

“Runs in our family, seems like,” their aunt responded.

Barry got dressed, taking a few moments to admire what Lup’s short hair looked like. He actually really liked it, he thought as he turned his head from one side to the other.

“It’ll sure make playing basketball less of a pain,” he said, then stopped – in order for anyone in this town, including Lup, to play any basketball at all ever again, he had to either stop the comet or get everyone away from it. He thought the second option was a bit more doable.

Stepping out into the kitchen, he stopped to watch the news.

“Phandalin’s comet has been visible to the naked eye for three days now,” the newscaster was saying. “Tonight it will reach its perigee at 7:40 p.m.”

“So it’s tonight, then,” Barry said, nodding. He had less time than he thought – but he was going to make it work somehow.

“Morning, Lup,” Aunt Maria said, bringing two plates of scrambled eggs and toast to the table. She looked up to smile at Barry, but stopped, her head tilting curiously. “Oh. You’re not Lup, are you?”

Choking on spit, Barry coughed for a minute before he was able to say anything. “You – you knew?”

“Not necessarily,” she said, setting the plate down and waving Barry over to sit next to her. “But watching your behavior lately has triggered some memories.”

Wordlessly, Barry joined her, his eyes wide.

“I remember having strange dreams as a young girl, too,” she explained. “Like I was walking in another life. Although, now… I can’t quite remember whose life it was.”

She seemed incredibly sad as she said this, and Barry knew the feeling. He felt it when he couldn’t remember Lup. He wondered if Aunt Maria had someone out there who was connected to her, as he was to Lup, or if their case was special.

“Treasure your experiences with each other,” she said solemnly. “Dreams fade after you wake up, you know.”

She sat there, quietly eating her eggs, and Barry didn’t know what to say. He had no idea this had happened before – or maybe he did. This was all becoming incredibly difficult to keep straight in his brain.

“My mother – that is, Lup and Taako’s grandmother – she had similar dreams, too,” she said.

“Maybe the reason you all had these dreams was to warn you about tonight,” Barry said, suddenly finding his voice. “Aunt Maria, a comet – Phandalin’s comet is going to strike Rio Dell tonight, and everyone is going to die if I don’t do something about it.”

Aunt Maria cocked her head. “Huh?”

 

After Barry explained everything (within reason) to Kravitz and Taako in the parking lot before school, Kravitz just blinked at him. “Your – your hair,” he managed.

“Oh, this?” Barry fingered the ends of it. “I like it. Listen, we have to do something or everyone is going to die tonight. We have to act!”

They ended up piling into the AV club room after school. Taako took Garyl to the local convenience store to load up on snacks (for someone who was looking to go into gourmet cooking, he had a mean appetite for junk food).

“I mean, there _is_ the emergency broadcast system,” Kravitz was explaining to Barry, frowning as he typed some phrases into Google.

“The what?”

“Those speakers that are all over town. They’re never used except for testing or when there’s, like, an earthquake, but I bet we can try and override the frequency.”

Barry grinned and threw an arm around Kravitz to squeeze him. “That’s an awesome idea, Kravitz! Great thinking.”

The boy blushed a little and smiled. “I’ve been known to dabble,” he explained. “If the government can spy on you, you gotta know how to spy on them.”

Patting him on the back, Barry said, “I appreciate that your political distrust is how we’re going to save the town, but let’s the conspiracies for another time.”

Kravitz simply shrugged. “I’ll tell Taako later,” he said. “Maybe he’ll listen.”

Looking at Kravitz for a moment, Barry laughed in disbelief. “You like him, don’t you? How have I not seen this before?”

Kravitz’s eyes immediately widened and the color drained from his face. “God, am I that obvious? Does he know? Please don’t tell me he knows. Please don’t tell him!”

“I won’t, I won’t!” Barry said, smirking. “But just know: That is the cutest thing I’ve ever heard and if you two don’t end up together I’m going to get Lup to beat you senseless.”

Saying nothing for a moment, Kravitz frowned. “Wait – ‘get Lup’?”

At that moment the door swung open and Taako entered, arms full of bags stuffed to the brim with what looked to be at least $40 worth of junk food.

“Come up with an escape plan yet?” he asked, and Barry and Kravitz made eye contact and grinned.

“We’re going to get some water gel explosives from the construction storage site that’s near city hall,” Kravitz began.

“Take out the power so the festival can’t go on,” Barry added.

“You can hijack the emergency broadcast so we can evacuate people to the school ­– it’s out of the disaster range,” Kravitz said, nodding at Taako.

“I’ll talk to the mayor – dad,” Barry said. “He’ll have to listen to me, right?”

“I mean, good fuckin’ luck,” Taako said, whistling. “That’s a hell of a plan you got there, my dudes. I would say a solid 75 percent of it is a crime...”

Barry and Kravitz leaned in in suspense before Taako smiled crookedly at them.

“And I am fucking _in_.”

“Yes!” Barry and Kravitz high fived while Taako shook his head.

“You know what? I take it back,” he said, glaring at them. “Y’all are nerds.”

They just grinned goofily at him.

 

“What on earth are you talking about?”

Lup and Taako’s father sat behind his desk in city hall, massaging his temples. Looking around his office, Barry could see why Aunt Maria didn’t want anything to do with him. He didn’t have any pictures up, not even of his own children. The whole place seemed… cold and detached. Even if he’d known nothing about the man who abandoned his family, Barry didn’t think he’d like him very much anyway.

“I said that we need to have an evacuation of the town to the high school tonight,” Barry repeated, a bit more forcefully this time. “We don’t have much – ”

“Shut your mouth,” Mayor Taaco said, and Barry gasped. “The comet will split and destroy the town? Over 500 people will die? How dare you spout this nonsense?”

Barry felt anger rising in him with every sentence the man spoke.

“If you’re joking, this isn’t funny. If you’re serious, you’re sick.” He shook his head and looked out of the window next to his desk. “Madness must come from your mother’s side. I’ll call a doctor, have someone look at you, then maybe I’ll listen.”

The man picked up the phone on his desk and began to dial a number. Barry’s legs started to seemingly move independent from his body and he stormed to the desk.

“You son of a…” he growled, slamming his hand down on the desk and grabbing the man’s tie.

Almost immediately he realized what he’d done, and the two of them stood there in shock, staring at each other. Barry let the tie drop from his grasp and he backed up a few steps.

“Lup,” the mayor said weakly, staring at him in disbelief. He looked hurt, almost broken. “No… who… who are you?”

Barry took a sharp intake of breath, feeling tears prickle at his eyes.

 

He walked, dejectedly, away from city hall when he heard a few younger kids talking a ways away.

“See you at the festival tonight!”

“Yeah! Let’s meet by the front, and we can – ”

“Don’t!” Barry ran over to them, grabbing one of them desperately by the shoulders. “Get out of town tonight, don’t go to the festival!”

They sneered at him as they wrestled out of his grip. “You’re crazy,” one said as they ran away from him.

“Hey!” Kravitz and Taako came over the hill on Kravitz’s bicycle. “Lup!”

Barry looked to them and sighed. He already felt like the plan was falling apart, and they only had around five hours to the comet.

“You accosting kids now?” Taako said, frowning at him. “I get that there’a comet coming – probably – but you’ve gotta know how this looks, right? I mean, you fly out to Chicago the other weekend, you’re yelling at children in the streets…”

 _Flew out to Chicago?_ Barry thought, his mind reeling. Did Lup come to see him?

He looked to the horizon where the lake and shrine were.

“Are you there?” he wondered aloud, and Kravitz and Taako squinted to where she was looking.

“Is there something over there?” Taako asked, shielding his eyes from the sun.

“Kravitz, lemme use your bike,” Barry said suddenly, pushing Kravitz so he wasn’t mounting it anymore.

“Hey!” Kravitz said as Barry took off pedaling toward Lake Rio Dell. “What about the rest of the plan?”

“Keep going with it like we talked about!” Barry called over his shoulder. “Please!”

If he had fallen asleep in the shrine as himself, three years from now, maybe Lup was there. The sun was about to set – maybe he could reach out to her through twilight? The idea wasn’t fully formed in his mind, but he felt like this had to be the best chance at ever seeing or talking to her again.

 

**_Lup_ **

 

The first thing Lup felt when she woke up was cold water dripping onto her cheek. She groaned as she opened her eyes, and as they adjusted, she noticed her room looked rather more cave-like than it usually did.

“Oh,” she said, in the moments before she fully awoke. “That’s probably because I’m in a cave.”

She went to rub the back of her head – it was sore for some reason – but as she did, she noticed something else.

“Oh! I’m Barry again! Holy shit!”

She was more excited than she’d ever tell him to be him again, but this was quickly overtaken by her surroundings. _What is he doing in a cave?_ she wondered, looking around. _Isn’t this…?_

The cave, luckily, wasn’t very deep, and as she exited she recognized Lake Rio Dell.

“Why is he _here_?” she asked, making to climb the deep slope that surrounded the lake. As she arrived at the top of the slope, she gasped. Where she expected to see trees and houses and the river – where she expected to see her hometown, she instead saw another lake.

“The town… is gone?” Suddenly, she had a horrible, vivid memory of a comet heading straight toward her. She felt sick to her stomach. “Am… am I dead?”

Sinking to her knees, she felt tears fall freely down her face.    

 

**_Barry_ **

 

Pedaling as fast as he could, Barry could feel sweat pouring down his face. _She went to Chicago?_ he thought, and then, suddenly – a memory he didn’t see when he had his dream, a dream that he finally now remembers –

_Barry._

_Barry._

_Don’t you remember me?_

Lup had used her father’s frequent flier miles to book a flight to Chicago for a weekend.

“Why are you going all the way to Chicago again?” Taako had asked while she packed a duffle bag.

“A, uh… a date,” she said, and Taako snorted.

“You have a partner in _Chicago_?”

“Not my date,” she said simply.

She sat by the window, smiling nervously as she read over the notes he’d left her in her phone. Her hair – still long at this point – was tied up in her usual braided style with a red braided cord.

 _If I suddenly show up, will he be bothered? Surprised?_ she had asked herself. _He might not like me just appearing out of the blue._

As they made their descent and they shuffled off the plane, Lup took a deep breath, stepping into the airport. She was excited – not just to see Barry, but to finally _be_ in Chicago. Luckily, she knew the city decently enough at this point to be able to navigate her way to him.

As she stood in the train station and called him, she got the same message he’d gotten: _We're sorry; you have reached a number that has been disconnected or is no longer in service. If you feel you have reached this recording in error, please check the number and try your call again._

She studied a train map for a bit and stepped onto the next arrival. She sat down, staring at her phone.

_What if I annoy him? Will it be awkward?_

She transferred to a bus so she could make it to the Museum of Contemporary Art in time.

As she stood on the pedestrian bridge in front of the museum, she tried his number again, and got a disconnected message yet again.

 _There’s no way we could meet_ , she thought sadly as she made her way through a crowd. _But I know… if we see each other, we’ll know._

She walked what seemed like the length of Chicago, searching every face in every crowd for him. She stopped by her favorite coffee shop and picked up an iced latte and a blueberry muffin, laughing a little. He’d be happy to hear that, for once, she spent her own money, and not his.

Sipping her iced latte, she sat at a train station and waited for a train that would take her to the motel she’d had to make a reservation at. One pulled up, and she looked at the windows speeding by, until…

Her eyes widened and she gasped. Standing up and running beside the near-full train, she couldn’t believe it. She’d resigned herself to going back without so much as a glimpse of him – and there he’d been, standing in the train, looking down at something – she couldn’t tell what.

Catching up with his car as the doors opened, she cursed when only one person got off. She squeezed into the car and muttered several variants of “sorry” and “excuse me” as she made her way to the center. The doors closed and the train took off, and she got closer and closer and closer until.

Until.

There he was.

Barry, standing right there, looking at _flash cards_ , of all things. She would have laughed if she wasn’t so nervous – and when the hell did she get nervous? But here she was, definitely blushing, and she reached a finger up to tug on a section of hair that had gotten loose from her braids.

She waited for him to look up, to notice her, but he seemed too engrossed to notice _anything_ , so she whispered, “Barry.” Then, when he didn’t look up: “Barry. _Barry_.”

He finally met her eyes, and she smiled timidly as she pointed to her face. “Uhm… it’s me, Lup.”

He didn’t say anything, just stared.

“Don’t you remember me?” she asked, trying not to let heartbreak creep into the question.

“Who are you?” he asked, and she gasped, tears threatening to flood her eyes.

“I… I’m sorry,” she said, turning from him.

 _But he’s Barry_ , she thought, and the train halted quickly so that she stumbled a little bit into him. This closeness, the sensation of touch, was almost too much for her to bear.

They reached her stop, and as she took one step out of the train, suddenly:

“Hey!”

She whipped around.

“What’s your name?” Barry asked her.

“Lup!” she called to him, taking the cord out of her hair and tossing it to him. “My name is Lup!”

 

Overwhelmed by this memory, Barry led the bicycle into a rock imbedded in the ground and quickly fell over. The front wheel was dented, and the handlebars were a bit twisted, and Barry couldn’t sit here and try to fix it.

 _Three years ago, you came_ , he thought as he started to run through the forest toward the lake. _You came to see_ me.

This thought sustained him until he reached the rim of the crater. The sun was almost to the edge of the horizon now, and he called, madly, out into the quiet are.

“Lup! Lup! You’re here, aren’t you? Inside my body!”

 

**_Lup & Barry_ **

 

Sitting with her head resting on top of her knees, suddenly Lup heard a faint voice.

“Lup!”

Was it… was he here?

“Lup! You’re here, aren’t you? Inside my body!”

“Barry!” she called desperately. “Barry, where are you?”

The two of them started running along the rim, their eyes scanning the area for the other. As they passed each other, each felt a pull, and they stopped.

“Barry?” Lup said, quieter now. “Barry, are you…”

“…there?” Barry finished his own question. They were standing feet from each other, but they could see nothing.

Suddenly – and yet, not suddenly at all – the sun set, and …

“It’s twilight,” they said at the same time, their heads slowly turning to look at each other.

They had returned to their own bodies. Their eyes couldn’t seem to stop looking at the other, and Barry smiled softly.

“Lup,” he said.

She stood there for what seemed like an eternity before taking a step towards him.

“Barry,” she said, and she was already crying. “Barry, it’s really you.” She rested her hands on his chest and reveled in his warmth – warmth that was under her own hands now instead of his.

“I came to see you,” he said, laughing. “It wasn’t easy because you live so far away.”

“But… how?” she asked, wiping her tears. “When the comet hit, I…”

“I drank the river water offering,” he said, and she gaped at him, backing up a few steps.

“You… you _drank_ that?” she asked, a tone of disgust in her voice. Feeling like he’d done something wrong, he opened his mouth to defend himself, but she cut him off. “Pervert! That was my _spit_!”

“Well, how else was I supposed to get to you!” he exclaimed.

“Oh yeah! And you just kept taking long, leisurely looks at my body in the mirror, right?”

“Wh—what? How did you know about that?” He was blushing, but in fairness, so was she.

“Taako saw it,” she said defiantly.

“It was just once!”

“Just once?” For a second, it seemed like she was backing down, but she sniffled and added, “Doesn’t matter how many times! Jerk.”

He nodded seriously and raised a hand to his forehead. “Sorry.”

“Oh,” she said, moving toward him, looking at the cord on his wrist. “This…”

“Oh, right! Why’d you come and see me before I knew you?” he said, gently admonishing. “You knew I wouldn’t recognize you.” He unspooled the cord and placed it in her hand. “Here, I kept it for three years. Now it’s your turn.”

She smiled at him and nodded. “Yeah, for sure,” she said, her voice wobbly as she wrapped it around her head in the style of a headband.

“How do I look?” she asked, adjusting it slightly.

“Not bad!” Barry said, rather unconvincingly, and she scowled.

“You’re lying! You’re always so…”

She didn’t finish her sentence because it devolved into laughter at the ridiculousness of the situation. Barry joined her, and for a moment, they were just two eighteen-year-olds laughing together.

When they stopped, Barry met her gaze seriously. “Lup, listen. You still have things to do.”

She looked up at the sky, where a bright blue streak was scarring it. “It’s coming,” she whispered.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “You’ve still got time.”

“Yeah,” she said, nodding resolutely. “I’ll try.”

They stood there for a moment before Lup turned her attention to the skyline.

“Twilight is almost…” she started.

“…over,” Barry finished mournfully. But he smiled as he pulled a felt-tip pen out of his pocket.

“Hey, Lup,” he said. “So we don’t forget when we wake up.”

He took her hand and scribbled on her palm. “Let’s write our names on each other. Here.” He handed her the pen.

She smiled and nodded, and as she made the first stroke of the first letter, the pen fell out of her hand and onto the ground.

Twilight was over, and Lup was gone.

 

**_Barry_ **

“Lup?” he whispered, as if saying it any louder would break the spell they’d woven. “Lup?” But she didn’t answer.

He looked out over the second crater. “I wanted to tell you,” he said quietly. “Wherever you are in the world, I’ll search for you.”

He looked up at the moon and took a deep breath.

“Your name is Lup.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I AM VERY SAD
> 
> please leave a comment if you also are very sad


	6. Chapter 6

**_Barry_ **

****

“Your name is Lup,” he said, squeezing his eyes shut, as if all external stimuli would just be a distraction from remembering her name.

“Lup. Lup. Your name is Lup.” He kept repeating it over and over, but something else was stronger – a fog, uncaring and destructive. “Lup. Your name is…”

Gasping, he fell to his knees and scrambled for the pen to finish what she’d started on his palm – but he couldn’t remember what came next. Angrily he racked his brain, trying to focus, but details were slipping away as quickly as he started to find them.

“Who are you?” he asked, horrified at his own memory. “Why did I come here?”

Looking around, he felt like he maybe once knew this place, but not anymore. Still—

“I came here to see her!” he called out across the lake, his own words echoing back to him. “To save her. I want her to be alive! But – who? Who is it?”

He shook his head, trying his best to clear it of the static that threatened to overtake him. “Someone close to me. I don’t want to forget – I _shouldn’t_ forget! Who? Who? Who?”

Staring out at the expanse, tears flowed down his face. “What’s your name?”

 

**_Lup_ **

 

Lup was running down through the forest from the lake, her mind focusing on one thing:

_Barry. Barry. Barry._

She could feel tears running down her face, but she couldn’t slow down or think of anything else.

_It’s okay. I’ll remember. I’ll never forget._

The comet was so bright it almost hurt to look at.

_Your name is Barry!_

She raced through the town and to the Rio Dell substation, finally stopping at the chain link fence to catch her breath. Hearing someone approach her, she turned frantically but sighed with relief when she saw who it was.

“Kravitz!”

“Lup! Where did you go off to?” he asked, pulling the duffle bag of explosives from his shoulder.

“Nowhere,” she said. “He told me sorry for breaking your bike.”

“Who did?”

“Me.” She waved his confusion away – they didn’t have time to go over the finer details of body swapping.

Kravitz merely shrugged and set the bag down next to the fence. “Explain everything to me later,” he said, looking up at the comet. “That thing’s really going to fall?”

Lup nodded vigorously. “I saw it with my own eyes.”

“You saw it, huh?” He’ was almost amused, but Lup could tell he believed her. “Well, I guess we’ve got no choice. Now we both get to be criminals.”

He took a huge pair of pliers out of the bag and set to breaking the chain keeping the fence closed. Lup felt nervous for a moment as the gate swung open, then shook it away. If the town was going to be saved, this had to happen. They took some explosives out of the duffle bag and got to work.

 

As Lup and Kravitz drove away on his motor scooter, Taako called his sister from the Rio Dell High School’s AV club room.

“Are you _sure_ I have to do this?” he asked, and she held the phone up to Kravitz’s ear as he drove.

“When the town’s power goes down, the broadcast equipment should work on backup,” he said. “Don’t worry about the software – I’ve already set up the switchboard with the frequency override, so all you have to do is hit broadcast and talk into the microphone using the script.”

“Please, repeat it as much as you can!” Lup said.

“Woohoo!” Kravitz yelled, punching the air with his fist. “You can do it, Taako!”

Fortified by Kravitz’s confidence, Taako took a deep breath in an attempt to center himself. “To hell with it,” he said, sitting down at the switchboard and flicking and pressing the switches and buttons he’d practiced.

 

Lup looked back at the substation a few miles away. “Soon, do you think?” she asked her friend.

“I have _no_ idea!” he said giddily. She was glad he was having fun with this whole thing, but she wasn’t sure it was sinking into his brain just how serious the consequences would be if it didn’t work out.

But, not even a minute after this exchange, a loud boom came from behind them, and sure enough – the substation had exploded.

Stopping, Kravitz and Lup marveled at their handiwork – and watched as the lights started to go out, one by one, throughout the area. If they’d done it right (and they were fairly sure they had) the entire town’s power would be completely down.

As they stood there, the warning sirens started blaring from the emergency broadcast system, and Taako’s voice came booming from the speakers.

“This is Rio Dell City Hall,” he said, reading from the script they’d devised. “An explosion has occurred at the substation. There is a danger of further explosions and forest fires. All those north of 15th Street, please evacuate to Rio Dell High School.

Meanwhile, at city hall, Mayor Taaco was pacing the halls as the phones rang nonstop. “If it’s not coming from here, then where is it coming from?” he demanded of an IT worker.

“This is Rio Dell City Hall…”

 

Arriving at the Rio Dell Festival, Kravitz and Lup dismounted the scooter and ran through the tents, yelling at the people still lingering.

“There’s been an explosion at the power station!”

“Go to the high school, get out of here!”

“Fires could spread through the forest!”

“It’s not safe here!”

Suddenly, Lup stopped dead in her tracks. Kravitz frowned, placing a hand on her shoulder. She whipped around, tears in her eyes.

“Lup?” he asked, bewildered. “What’s wrong?”

“His name,” she said. “I can’t remember his name!”

Kravitz, normally an incredibly kind and patient person, had a look that Lup would categorize as ‘fed up.’ “Okay, how should I know his name? You’re the one who came up with this plan, and we can’t evacuate everyone by ourselves! You need to go persuade your father!”

Lup stood in place for a second before nodding silently and taking off toward city hall. A second explosion occurred at the substation, and Kravitz turned to the crowd.

“Everybody run! Go to the high school!”

Lup was running as fast as her legs could take her – down stairs, through walking paths, pushing by people she’d grown up with, people she’d known her entire life. People who would die if her father didn’t listen to her.

 

“What? The signal is coming from the high school?” Mayor Taaco said as a trembling IT worker stood before his desk. “Well, get someone to go there and stop it!”

 

“Again, residents above 15th street, please evacuate to Rio Dell High Sch—shit!”

“What are you doing? Turn that off!”

 

Taako was being escorted by some government workers down the halls of the high school. “What were you thinking, Taako?” one of them asked him.

“I’m trying to save the fuckin’ town!” he spat back, but stopped as another broadcast began.

“This is Rio Dell City Hall. We are currently looking into the incident. Please do not panic. Stay where you are and await further instructions.”

 

“Come on, you should all evacuate!” Kravitz was telling the people gathered at the festival. “The high school is the shelter!”

“Mac!” a voice called – three government workers who knew Kravitz’s family. He sighed and closed his eyes, head bowed.

“Sorry, Lup,” he muttered as the men grabbed him and pulled him away from the crowds. “It’s over.”

Raising his head, he looked at the sky – and gasped.

“It really _is_ splitting apart!” he cried, pointing to the comet.

 

News stations all over the world were just as shocked as Kravitz was – this was an unprecedented turn of events, they were saying.

Somewhere in Chicago, a freshman in high school was telling his father that he was going outside to watch the comet.

Taako and Kravitz were begging the adults near them to listen to them, to believe them.

 

And Lup was running, taking barely any time to breathe or even think. But still, one thread kept her going.

“What’s your name? Who are you? What’s your name?”

Looking toward the river, she saw two reflections for the comet in the water instead of one. Looking up, she saw what had happened: “Fuck!” she cried. “It’s split!”

At that moment, though, her shoe caught on a crack in the pavement, and she tripped, tumbling down a steep incline.

She landed at the bottom, scraped and bloodied, curled up into a ball.

_So we don’t forget when we wake up, let’s write our names on each other._

Opening her eyes, she uncurled one of her fists to see the writing. Gasping, her eyes widened as she read what was written there:

 _I love you_.

Somebody loved her. Somebody loved her enough to warn her about the comet. She had to keep going, for them. Pushing herself up and wincing at the pain, she looked at her hand one more time, smiling.

“I can’t remember your name with this,” she said, “but I’m going to save Rio Dell because of it.”

And she started to run again.

 

Finally reaching her father’s office, she burst through the door, breathing heavily.

“Dad!” she called to the man.

“Lup?” Aunt Maria and Taako were sitting in the sofa in the middle of the office.

“Lup?” her father asked, his expression hardening. “Not you again.”

But as she approached him with a determination she’d hardly ever shown with him, he softened.

 

Ten minutes later, Phandalin’s Comet hit Rio Dell.

 

**_Barry_ **

 

Barry woke up, squinting into the sunlight. He was curled up on the rim of what looked like a huge crater with a lake at the bottom.

Frowning, he stood up, and looked at his palm – a palm that had a single line drawn on it. Why?

“What am I doing here?” he wondered.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> here's where i confess i know nothing about power stations OR what the internal workings of a small town's government is like!
> 
> i'm really sorry for this chapter being so short – but to make it up to you, i'm going to publish the final chapter tomorrow! (i've had it written since before i started publishing the fic.)
> 
> as always, please leave a review if you enjoyed reading! i love you very much and i'm so excited to come to the end of this fic with y'all!!


	7. Chapter 7

**_Barry_ **

 

Barry was always searching for something.

As he rushed from job interview to job interview, the feeling waned but it was always _there_.

“I want to build landscapes that are not only structurally sound, but memorable,” he told one group of potential employers. “You never know when Chicago might be wiped off the map, just like Rio Dell.”

Rio Dell. He wasn’t sure why he kept coming back to that town, that disaster. He didn’t even know anybody there, but he had done so much reading on what happened that he felt like he did. The comet that broke away struck the town, but by some miracle they were having some kind of emergency evacuation drill, and no one was killed. A few people were hurt, but nothing life-threatening. An interesting natural disaster, sure, but he didn’t know what once drew him to the event so desperately.

Sitting with Magnus and Merle at the café, he found himself lost in his latte, the static of his memories threatening to overtake his thoughts.

“Barry? Barry?” Merle nudged him. “Come on, stay with us. I asked how many interviews you’ve had.”

His head snapped up. “Hm?”

“Interviews?” Magnus said blankly. “How many?”

“Oh, I don’t even know,” he replied, shaking his head a bit. “More than I can count.”

“I can’t see you with a job,” laughed Merle, taking a sip of his tea.

“Hey!” Barry said indignantly. “Just how well are the two of you doing post-grad, anyway?”

“I have two job offers,” Merle said, shrugging.

“I have four,” Magnus followed up.

Scowling, Barry flicked some of the foam from his latte at his friends. Suddenly his phone buzzed, and as he read the text, he smiled a little.

After leaving the café, his thoughts returned to whatever it is that seemed to be wanting in his life. _Am I just looking for a job?_ he wondered, frowning. _It feels more like a… person. Or a place._

He reached a bridge overlooking a walkway. Lucretia was leaning on the railing and smiled as soon as she saw him. He returned it – it really was great to see her, and he was looking forward to catching up.

After they greeted each other and hugged, they started walking. “So what brings you around today?” he asked, burying his hands in his pockets.

“Ah, work’s got me traveling, and I figured I’d say hi for a bit while I was nearby.”

“Well, I’m really glad you did,” Barry said, bumping into her a little. “It’s always nice to see you.”

“You too,” she said, smirking a little.

They passed by a storefront with a news ticker running across the top of the window: _Eight years since freak comet impact_.

“We went to Rio Dell once, didn’t we?” Lucretia asked, her brow furrowed a bit. “You were… still in high school, so it must’ve been…”

“Five years ago,” Barry said softly. The tugging returned, and he felt like he might cry.

“Wow,” she whistled. “That long ago? I’ve forgotten a lot, I guess.”

“Me too. A lot of high school is kind of fuzzy to me,” he admitted.

“And… you didn’t come back to Chicago with us, did you?” Her voice was distant and she was squinting, as if trying to see something far away. “You stayed there a little longer.”

“You’re right,” Barry said, and something inside him was screaming that this detail was _important_ , so _crucially important_ , but he had no idea why. “I… spent the night in some cave. Did we get into some kind of fight? Is that why you left?”

Lucretia just shrugged, but he knew there was something missing.

He was always searching.

He walked her to her train station and hugged her goodbye.

“You be happy someday, too, okay, Barry?” she said as she dug her chin into his shoulder, and he squeezed her once.

 _I’m trying_ , he thought.

As he made his way to his apartment, he wondered if he should stop by a coffee shop for a little bit before turning in for the night – but one, then two, then a thousand raindrops suddenly made his decision for him, and he ducked into one on a street corner.

Ordering a latte and a cranberry scone, he sat at a counter against the window. He pulled out his planner and took inventory of what the rest of the week held for him: an interview with a construction company, another with a small architectural firm, another with – 

“I know you’re telling me _now_ that you don’t want your own cake, but I’m telling _you_ that come wedding time, you’re gonna want one. Trust me.”

“I don’t! I don’t even really like sweets.”

“Okay, bubbeleh, just because it’s called a groom’s cake doesn’t mean it’s just for you. There are going to be other people there, you know.”

“We’ll talk about it later, Taako.”

 _Taako_?

Barry slowly turned his head to see the people talking, but the two were heading out of the shop, their backs to him. Did he know them? Did he used to? Why was everything in his life so incomplete, so… wrong?

A dull throbbing occupied his brain, and he decided to leave the shop and get some rest. _I’ve got so much to plan for_ , he thought as he made his way through the rain. _I need to do some more research on that one firm, and I should probably see my dad sometime soon. I wonder when –_

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a flash of red. A red that intensified the ever-present tugging twentyfold, but when he turned to see what – or who – it might be, he only saw a few people, bundled up and shrouded by umbrellas. No one of importance, he told himself bitterly as he turned onto his street.

After that, weeks passed without incident. He ended up getting a job at one of the seemingly dozens of architectural firms he interviewed at. The responsibilities weren’t much, for now, at least – but he was doing what he’d always wanted to do. He liked his coworkers well enough. He was making enough to keep living where he did _and_ buy an unlimited train pass every month. These perks were nice, but the biggest plus was that it kept him busy near constantly. He almost never had enough mental energy to think about Rio Dell, or what might be missing in his life. He almost never had the free time to absentmindedly doodle landscapes from that small California town that he’d only been to once, long ago.

Almost.

The searching feeling hadn’t gone away, exactly, but it had numbed. It helped that he was making new friends in addition to the ones carried over from high school, he thought. These new friends didn’t know anything about his admittedly weird fixation on a nonfatal natural disaster that happened almost a decade ago, and he took pains to make sure they never did. In each face he greeted in a bar, however, in each person he made friends with, he tried to find _something_. He wasn’t sure what it was, but he knew that while some may come close, none of them had it.

Dating was out of the question, he told Magnus firmly when his friend asked why he hadn’t tried to branch out at all. With a new job, he had no time to focus on trying to fit someone else in his life.

Plus the one date he went on in the last year went almost catastrophically poorly. The girl was very sweet, and there was nothing technically _wrong_ with her, but he might have… gotten up and left in the middle of the date because of something she said.

“It’s just like, I feel like every day there is the same, you know?” the girl (he thought her name was Chloe?) was explaining about her job at an accounting firm. “It pays well enough, but I feel like I’m in some sort of time loop.”

Loop.

Loop?

“What did you just say?” Barry had said, attempting not to sound as frenzied as he felt.

“Huh?” Her nose scrunched in confusion. “I, uh, I just was saying that my job feels really… monotonous.”

“No, no – the loop thing, why’d you say that? Why’d you use those words?”

She was frowning, but it didn’t seem to register to him. “Uh, I don’t know. Why, was it bad?”

“I have to go,” he’d said, standing up from their table. He pulled out his wallet, took $50 and set it down on the table. “There, that should cover it. I’m really sorry, but I… I’ve got to go.”

So no, he didn’t feel like dating would do his life any good. But that was okay, he reasoned. He had friends, a job, an… unlimited ride card. If he wasn’t okay with how his life was going, that was his own fault.

But still, sometimes he woke up in tears and the feeling of searching resurfaced. The moment in between sleep and consciousness, he could almost grasp what his dreams might have been – but inevitably they slipped away from him. He tried to hold in his frustration at these times, but sometimes it was so palpable that he felt like he could explode.

One day after work he decided to visit the library and flip through some of the newspaper archives from the time of the comet. His fixation with Rio Dell, while maddening and confusing, provided him with some comfort when he felt more lost than usual. Pulling his sketchbook out of his messenger bag, he started drawing the familiar landscapes – the banks of the river, the beautiful emerald forests. He stayed, hunched over the pages until the side of his hand turned completely black from his pencil and the library was about to close.

The next morning he didn’t wake up from crying, and he felt slightly better than he did the day before – not much, but slightly.

 _I guess this is just my base state now,_ he thought, somewhat resignedly as he headed out of his apartment. _Better get used to it_.

He loaded onto a crowded train car and pulled his phone out for his perfunctory commute game of Candy Crush. Thinking of how this might be the most fun part of his day, he glanced out the window of the door at the train passing by in the opposite direction.

And, through a window in that other train, he saw her. A beautiful woman with a bright red braided cord tying back her long blonde hair. She was wearing a blazer and dark wash jeans, and for some reason that tore an admittedly crazed laugh out of him. She looked at him and her eyes widened, and he knew –

(Barry had never been one for metaphor, so later when he remembered this moment and thought that his heart stopped for a second – he meant his heart literally felt like it seized up in his chest, like everything ceased function for that moment.)

 _All this time I’ve been searching for_ someone, and the sudden understanding – the realization that it wasn’t _what’s_ been missing from his life, but _who –_ made him want to cry with joy. He immediately started calculating how long it was until the next stop, every second ticking torturously slowly by. Bouncing on his heels, he shoved his way out of the crowded car once the doors opened, and he started running wildly through the station. Would she know where he was? Did she get off too? Should he get on the downtown train?

He decided not to get back on a train, remembering vaguely how his father used to tell him that if he ever got lost, the best thing to do was to stay in one place. But he couldn’t stay here, where there were so many people passing by – people who weren’t _her_. Tearing his way through the turnstile, down the stairs and onto the sidewalk, he looked around frantically, but didn’t see her.

 _I’m not just going to stand around and wait_ , he decided resolutely. _Not when I’ve finally found her_. So he ran. He didn’t know where he was going, but he felt like he was being pulled somewhere. Eventually he reached steep stairs, and as his eyes traveled the length of it, they found her. Standing there at the top.

Why he didn’t just run to her, after all the effort he’d put in to get here, he didn’t know. But he slowly made his way up the stairs as she started to make her way down. As they passed by, he felt the tugging stronger than it had ever been – but he kept walking. And he might have just kept walking, too, but his heart was on fire for the first time in years, and though he didn’t know why, he couldn’t let her get away.

So he turned around.

“Hey!” he called out, and she stopped. “Haven’t we met before?”

 

**_Lup_ **

 

Lup was always searching for something.

She thought she might find it after she moved to Chicago for work – maybe California had finally gotten to be too much for her, and it was time she left it behind. So she, Taako and Kravitz packed their bags and made the two-day trip across the country, with all their belongings crammed into the biggest moving truck they could afford (which was, unsurprisingly, not very big.)

But now, three years into her time in her new city, she realized: No. It wasn’t Chicago. Not that she didn’t love it there, though. Her desire to move away to a big, Northern city finally fulfilled, she tried her best to savor every weird quirk the place had to offer. And her job was, amazingly, fulfilling her creatively – she nabbed a gig doing social media for the fine arts department of a local college, and it had been going incredibly well. She knew she should feel like the luckiest person in the world, with everything she had.

And yet this persistent pulling, like a thread attached to her gut, surfaced every now and then reminding her: _you’re missing something_. When she tried to explain it to Taako, he did his best to understand, but she knew instinctually that he didn’t really get it.

“It’s like… ever since the comet, something’s felt off in my life,” she told him one night as they sat on her bed.

“Well, I mean, I think that’s normal, Lulu,” her twin had replied in the soft, understanding tone he only reserved for those closest to him. “Our entire town got destroyed.”

“I mean, yeah, I know that.” She sighed, letting her head fall back and hit the wall. “But it’s more than that. I… I feel like I have this part of me that’s missing. Something really important, but the fucking _infuriating_ thing about it is I can’t remember what I lost.”

The almost pitying way Taako was looking at her was enough to make her scream. She loved him more than anything else in the entire world, but sometimes he really could be a self-righteous shit.

“Well, no matter what you might’ve lost, you’ve still got me and Krav,” he said, smiling a little and nudging her. “We’re all ya need.”

It was incredible how Lup’s opinion of her brother could turn on a dime, just from a smile. She had returned it and rested her head on his shoulder. “Ain’t it the fucking truth.”

And even though having her brother and his fiancé in the same city really did help Lup out, it didn’t do anything to assuage the feeling that she was losing precious time that she could spend looking for whatever it was she needed.

One morning a few weeks later, she was eating lunch in the break room at work when a news story flashed on the TV mounted on the wall: _The town that disappeared: Eight year anniversary of Rio Dell comet_. She sighed and continued eating the fried rice that she and Taako had made the night before.

“Hey, aren’t you from Rio Dell?” one of her coworkers asked, his eyes on the TV as he stood by the microwave.

“Mmhm,” she replied, taking a sip of water.

“That really sucks,” he said, turning to her, but when Lup narrowed her eyes and tilted her head as if to silently say _“The fuck?”_ he continued: “I just mean, having your whole hometown destroyed by some freak comet? I’m really sorry that happened.”

She really didn’t fancy discussing this with someone she barely knew, but she could tell when a person meant well. “Thanks. It did super suck, but at least no one died.”

“Yeah, you had some sort of drill so everyone was gone, right? That’s some crazy luck.”

Something about that detail called out to Lup, and she realized that she couldn’t exactly remember what the drill was for, or why they even had it. What was it that drew everyone away from the exact spot where the comet hit? They were all in the high school… but _why_?

“I guess so,” she said distractedly. “I don’t… remember much about it, really. We went to Paradise after it happened.” When he gave her an odd look, she clarified, “Paradise, as in the city in California. We didn’t go to heaven.”

“Ah,” he said, smirking. “Got it.”

She didn’t say anything, just returned to her lunch and her thoughts about the parts of her memory that were seemingly just… gone. What happened to them? What happened to her?

“Uhm, so, Lup,” her coworker – who, now that she thought about it, might be named either Dan or Elias, she wasn’t sure which – said, looking down at his shoes. “There’s this new popup bar downtown that’s supposed to be really cool, and I was wondering if, ah, you wanted – ”

Lup, seeing all too clearly where this was going, was already shaking her head. “Oh, Dan…lias. No. No no no. No. You don’t even have to finish that one, my dude. Answer’s no.”

He looked dejected, but Lup hardly felt bad about turning down a date while her mouth was half full of fried rice and the two of them were _at work_. Plus, she just… didn’t feel the need to enter into any sort of romantic relationship. She hadn’t for a while, much to Taako’s chagrin.

“Sorry, guy, but I’m remarkably unavailable,” she said by way of explanation. “It’s not just you. It’s, like, the world at large. Don’t overthink it.”

This seemed to be an acceptable reason for the man, and, smiling a little, he shrugged as he headed out of the break room. “Alright. Can’t say I didn’t try. Sorry again about your town.”

“Right,” Lup murmured, her mind already back on the gaps in her memory regarding the comet. It wasn’t that she didn’t remember her entire childhood; she did, sometimes too clearly. It was just around the time that the comet hit – the weeks leading up to it, the night of. There was fuzz or static surrounding the event, and the harder Lup tried to concentrate on it, the more it slipped away. She groaned in frustration and spooned more rice into her mouth.

The rest of the day passed by relatively uneventfully, but that searching feeling she was usually so good at ignoring was stronger than ever.

She was always looking for something.

At 4:30 her phone pinged with a text from Taako: _krav & i are going to groundswell to wedding plan for a bit after work. you should come just to hang._

Snorting, she shook her head. She loved her brother and his partner dearly, but she could think of ten million things she’d rather do than be party to discussions about place settings or punch flavors. She texted back _idk about staying for your wack wedding planning but i can walk you there for sure_

She met up with them a few blocks away from her office and joined their walk as they started heading toward the coffee shop. A couple of minutes passed before Taako noticed his sister wasn’t saying much.

“You okay, sis?” he asked, looking across Kravitz at her. “You’re usually much, like, louder than this.”

She knew that, coming from Taako, this was a compliment, so she wasn’t up in arms like she usually would be. “Yeah,” she said. “I mean… I guess?” She stopped walking and turned to the two of them. “What do you remember about the comet?”

“What do I remember?” Kravitz repeated, while Taako’s nose scrunched up in confusion.

“Yeah. What specifically do you remember from that day?”

The two men were quiet for a moment before Taako spoke up. “I mean, there wasn’t really much going on. The festival was that day. Uhm.”

“That was the day you cut your hair!” Kravitz supplied excitedly, and Taako made eye contact with Lup and smirked.

“Yeah, but what else? Like, there was an emergency drill, right? That’s why no one died.” They nodded. “Why? Why’d we have a drill? We never had drills, not like that.”

Taako and Kravitz were quiet. “I’m not sure,” Kravitz finally said. Taako shrugged apologetically.

Lup sighed, stuck her hands in her pockets and resumed walking. _Well, if they don’t have an answer, at least I’m not the only one_ , she thought dejectedly. _I just wonder why I’m the only one bothered by it._

They reached the coffee shop, and Lup truly did not feel like going in with them. “I’ll see y’all later, alright?” she said, giving them a little wave as they part.

She decided to walk aimlessly, but a sudden downpour kind of ruined those plans, and she ducked into a bar – which was just fine, she thought. She could use a drink.

Sitting at the end of the bar and nursing a vodka cranberry, she rested her head in her hand and thought. She hated to dwell on things, especially if they were sad. It was maudlin, and that was not her style whatsoever, but for some reason the sensation of loss had been dominating her thoughts lately.

“…Barry said he might be able to make it. He’s in talks with that firm, you know, but I bet they won’t start him before then.”

Lup’s breath hitched and she sat up straighter, frantically looking around for the source of the voice.

“Well, that’s good. I’m glad he’s finally doing something he wants to.”

The people speaking were a tall burly man with frankly ridiculous sideburns and a shorter man with a full beard whose hair was already starting to grey. Lup felt like crying looking at them, but couldn’t think of a reason why. She was certain she didn’t know them… but they seemed so terribly familiar. She tried to will her feet to stand, to ask who they were, but she couldn’t seem to move. The two were making their way out of the bar, anyway, and she deflated. Looking down at her still mostly full drink, she saw a few tears splash into it. She wiped her eyes indignantly, and made her way to the bathroom to fix her makeup.

She stayed in there for a while, just looking at herself in the mirror. Same blonde hair she’d always had, same tan skin and freckles, same green eyes, same round nose. But for once she felt like she was losing herself.

 _Who am I?_ she wondered.

She didn’t touch her drink again – just left a few dollars on the bar and headed out. Opening her umbrella, she made her way into the street and started to walk home. As she walked across a bridge, someone drew her eye as she passed by them. She kept walking, but stopped a ways down and turned around. There were a few people, but she couldn’t make any of them out.

_What’s wrong with me?_

After that day, she decided to distract herself by pouring all of her energy into work. She took on more projects at one time than she ever had before, she stayed later hours, she gave herself almost no time to think about what may or may not be missing from her life. Her superiors were significantly impressed with her new work ethic, and at the end of one day one of them came to her desk to tell her to take the next one off.

“Oh, no, I’ve got all this work to do,” she protested, and the woman laughed.

“You can afford to skip _one day_ , Lup,” she said. “I swear, I wish half the people here worked as hard as you do.”

Lup laughed a little and slowly started to gather her things as her boss walked away. She wondered if she could show up and just set her laptop up in the bathroom and do her work there, but then decided it’d be too much effort. One free day wouldn’t kill her.

Still, she woke up at the same time the next morning as she would if she were going to work, and decided to make a day of walking around the city, maybe doing some shopping.

The train car was just as crowded as it usually was at this time of morning (her only complaint about the city was how _many people_ managed to fit in the trains) and she managed to work her way to stand by the door on the other side. She scrolled through some of the day’s news on her phone, caught up on some emails, and started to listen to an episode of a podcast when she looked out the window.

There was a train directly next to hers going in the opposite direction, but what she cared about was the man staring out of the window – directly at her. He had got glasses, short brown hair and the kindest looking eyes she’d ever seen, and he looked like he was laughing.

Every nerve felt electrified, and the feeling she’d been carrying around for years now lifted itself – Lup felt lighter than she had in ages, and she wanted to cry with joy. Her heart seemed like it could burst with how full it felt, and she just knew that her entire life was going to be different because she’d found him.

 _All this time I’ve been searching for_ someone, she realized with a jolt, and as their trains pulled away from each other and she lost sight of him, she laughed giddily. She just had to get off the train at the next stop and find him. That was all she had to do.

Once the train reached its next destination, she almost bulldozed through the crowd to get off the car and onto the platform. _Okay, so he was heading the other direction, so he might get on a train and head back this way, or maybe he left the station, or maybe—_

 _Just GO!_ something inside of her screamed, and she started running – down the stairs, onto the sidewalk and in a random direction. She didn’t know at all where she was going, but she felt something pulling her, as if by a thread.

Eventually she ended up at some stairs, and as she stopped, her eyes followed the slope until they reached him standing at the bottom. He slowly started to make his way up, as she started to descend… and they passed by each other. Why didn’t she stop? Why didn’t she say something? She didn’t know, but her heart almost ached with him so nearby.

Suddenly:

“Hey!” She stopped abruptly. “Haven’t we met before?”

Even though she could already feel tears running down her face, she smiled and turned around to look up to him.

“I thought so too,” she said, laughing a little.

They stared at each other for a beautiful moment.

“Your name is…?” they asked at the same time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh WOW! we've finally reached the end, i can't believe it! this was my first multichapter fic that i've ever taken on and finished, so i can't tell you how much it's meant to me to see how people have been enjoying it and just reading it in general. i don't want to get sappy, like, at all, but writing and publishing this has been an awesome part of the last few weeks for me, and i super appreciate you for just... reading it.
> 
> if you enjoyed the fic, i really do recommend giving the movie a watch. it's been one of the best movies i've seen all year and it just came out on DVD in america!! 
> 
> alright, i could say more, but i won't, except: i love you very much. i hope you're doing well. thank you so much for reading. <3

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Worlds Apart](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12775884) by [ElZacharie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElZacharie/pseuds/ElZacharie)




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